CPN (Unified Socialist) is recommending the party’s candidates for the upcoming election from across the country even as the ruling coalition struggles to finalize sharing of seats.
The coalition is struggling to decide on sharing of seats with Nepali Congress (NC) demanding 100 out of 165 House of Representatives (HoR) seats, CPN (Maoist Center) 60, Unified Socialist 40 and Janata Samajwadi Party (JSP) 32.
Unified Socialist recommended Sudesh Parajuli, Ram Prasad Pokharel and Mohan Gautam for candidacy from Kathmandu-5 on August 25.
Similarly, Jhala Nath Khanal has been recommended from Ilam-1 and Sanjeev Rai from Ilam-2 while Naresh Shahi has been recommended from Bajura.
The party formed following split in the main opposition CPN-UML has also been recommending candidates for provincial assembly from the respective districts. The party, that is going to contest parliamentary election for the first time, is leading in recommending candidates even as the coalition is struggling to finalize sharing of seats.
Unified Socialist Spokesperson Jagannath Khatiwada told Setopati that the party would receive name for probable candidates from all 77 districts by Wednesday. “We are doing this to complete all kinds of works at the lower level to mentally prepare them for election by seeking names in time,” Khatiwada explained when asked why the party is hurrying in recommending candidates. “We should also be ready on our own if we can’t agree on sharing of seats in the coalition. Those recommended for candidacy would be ready to both contest the election or support common coalition candidate.”
He added that the party would seek at least 24 HoR seats as per the policy of retaining the seats that the coalition partners had won five years back and proportionally sharing the seats won by UML among the partners on the basis of votes secured in the recent local election and the parliamentary election five years back.
The party currently has 12 HoR members elected through first-past-the-post electoral system on ticket of the then UML that had allied with Maoist Center five years back with promise of post-election unification. But the party failed to secure significant number of votes in most of those 12 constituencies in the recent local election.
Sharing of seats looks set to be complex for the party also because there are influential leaders of other parties in those 12 constituencies.
