CPN (Unified Socialist) candidate for deputy mayor of Kathmandu Metropolitan City Rameshwore Shrestha has demanded recounting of votes.
The common candidate of ruling coalition also including Nepali Congress (NC), CPN (Maoist Center) and Janata Samajwadi Party (JSP) has applied with the Election Office demanding that ballots marked both on NC's symbol tree and Unified Socialist's pen not be declared invalid.
The ruling coalition had agreed to field Sirjana Singh of NC for mayor and Shrestha of Unified Socialist for deputy mayor in Kathmandu.
He has argued that the ballots with both tree and pen marked cannot be deemed invalid as NC has not fielded a candidate for the post.
He has demanded that such ballots be counted as marked on pen as NC has not fielded a candidate as per the spirit of clauses 17, 19, 22, 24 and 26 of the Local Level Election Act 2017, and called for recounting in accordance to clause 52 of the Local Level Election Act 2017.
A large number of votes for deputy mayor have been declared invalid. Setopati had published a news report Sunday afternoon pointing that 36,000 votes were invalid until then.
Shrestha has claimed that around 50% of the invalid votes are those with both tree and pen marked and argued that they should be counted as his votes.
Sunita Dangol of CPN-UML is currently leading in vote counting with 44,705 votes while Shrestha is far behind at 15,670.
