Kathmandu, Nov 4: The Election Commission (EC) has requested nearly Rs 8 billion from the government to conduct the House of Representatives election scheduled for March 5. The Commission formally proposed a budget of Rs 7.81 billion to the Ministry of Finance.

Officials said four rounds of talks between the two sides have already taken place, but no final agreement has been reached. Ministry spokesperson Tank Prasad Pandey said discussions are ongoing and the ministry has not yet decided on the amount to be allocated. “Talks with the Commission are still in progress. No formal decision has been made, but the ministry will soon finalize the necessary budget,” he said.

Election Commission spokesperson Narayan Prasad Bhattarai also confirmed that the budget discussion remains unresolved. “We have proposed Rs 7.81 billion, but the amount of agreement depends on further discussions,” he said.

For comparison, the 2022 federal and provincial elections had cost Rs 5.81 billion.

On October 21, the Cabinet decided to freeze smaller development projects costing less than Rs 30 million as part of an expenditure control plan. Following that decision, the Finance Ministry froze Rs 120 billion in budget allocations from various ministries.

The interim government plans to use part of the frozen budget to fund the upcoming election and rebuild public infrastructure damaged during recent protests. The Finance Ministry has already approved Rs 750 million for the Nepal Police and Armed Police Force to purchase vehicles needed for election security and logistics.

People’s News Monitoring Service