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By Our Reporter

Major three parties—Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and the CPN (Maoist Centre) won most of the seats of the local level by-elections held on December 1. The by-election results made public on Monday night clearly showed that most voters are behind the three parties no matter how much the new and small parties spit venom to them labelling them as parties of corrupts.

Even the Rastriya Swatantra Party, which won eight seats under the first-past-the-post elections to the House Representatives in 2022 and by-election in 2023, and was claiming to be the biggest party in 2027 won only one ward chair.

In the by-election held for 44 positions across the country, NC won 19 seats including the Mayor of Kirtipur and district coordination chairs of Okhaldhunga and Kailali.

NC’s Krishnaman Dangol won in Kirtipur by securing 5,334 votes while his closest rival was Professor Shiva Sharan Maharjan of the Maoist Centre who got 4,555 votes and Surendra Manandhar of the UML got 4,337 votes.

The CPN (Maoist Centre) won 11 seats including the chairman of Gramathan Rural Municipality in Morang. In 2022, NC won Gramathan but this time Maoist Centre won it, and winner Namo Narayan Majhi had recently joined the Maoist Centre by deserting the NC after the latter denied him a ticket. 

The CPN-UML won seven positions including the chairman of Mahabu Rural Municipality of Dailekh.  Earlier, in 2022, NC had won the position, but this time UML’s Jang Bahadur Shahi won. Shahi has joined UML by deserting the CPN (Unified Socialist).

While Janata Samajwadi Party won two seats, CPN (Unified Socialist), RSP, Majdoor Kisan Party and independent won one seat each. However, the Rastriya Prajatantra Party and Janamat Party failed to seat even a single seat.

RSP which had fielded its candidate in 26 of 44 positions won one seat in Kathmandu-16 but failed to secure votes in three digits in most of the other places.

The election clearly showed that the people though not happy with the performance of the big parties, have no option but give vote for any of them. Interestingly,  the three parties failed to retain most of the seats they had won in the 2022 election, but still, they won the new seats stealing from the rival parties. While the Maoist Centre fared badly in the West, it performed well in the East.  Among the three big, the Maoist Centre won encouraging seats even by putting the CPN-UML behind.   

NC won the largest number of seats in the by-election, it was also the biggest loser as it had won 27 of the 44 positions in the 2022 local-level elections.