By Our Reporter

The Rastriya Prajatantra Party which failed to become a national party in the 2017 poll has emerged as one of the important forces in national politics this time. While it won only one seat in the House of Representatives in 2017 under the First-Past-The-Post category and no seat under the PR category for failing to get 3 per cent votes in total. But this time, it is likely to win at least four seats under FPTP and a half dozen under PR as it is sure to get more than 7 per cent PR votes this time.

The RPP made a strong presence in the new leadership of Rajendra Lingden, the single leader of the RPP to win the election in 2017. This time too he is leading and likely to win the election. Dhawal Shumsher Rana in Banke has already won the election. Besides, Dhurba Pradhan in Nawalparasi and Gyan Bahadur Shahi in Jumal are sure to win as they have left rival candidates far behind. It is likely to become the fifth-largest party in terms of PR votes it is receiving. As such the RPP is likely to have 10 lawmakers in the HoR this time.

However, it is suspected that many of the PR votes of the RPP went Rastriya Swatantra Party.

Meanwhile, the RPP-Nepal-led Kamal Thapa is likely to not have a single seat in the HoR. Thapa himself is trailing far behind the NC candidate in Makwanpur.

    

CPN (Unified Socialist) may fail to become a national party

Although CPN (Unified Socialist) is likely to win at least seven seats under FPTP category, it may not secure votes enough to get the recognition of a national party. By now it has secured nearly 12, 000 votes, less than the votes received by the Majdoor Kisan Party.

If the CPN (US) fails to cross the threshold of 3 per cent, it will be a big setback for Madhav Kumar Nepal and a big relief to UML chair KP Oli, who has tried his best to prevent the Unified Socialist from becoming the national party. If it fails to become a national party, the party will have only seven lawmakers as independents in the 275-member House of Representatives.

As such, it has no option but to get unified with the Maoist Centre and expand its organizational bases. 

If Jhalanath loses the elections, he may return to the UML and many others may tread his path.

As of Wednesday, Madhav Kumar Nepal, Met Mani Chaudhary, Sher Bahadur Kunwar, Prem Ale, Krishna Kumar Shrestha, Rajendra Pandey, Prakash Jwala were leading in the counting. Birodh Khatiwada is trailing behind in Makwanpur while Khanal is also behind the UML candidate in Ilam.