Nepali Congress created a record on Monday by winning in a Kathmandu constituency that has remained a Communist bastion and gained an additional seat in the Constituent Assembly by-elections held the day before.
The Kathmandu-2 constituency had previously elected former prime minister and senior CPN-UML leader, Madhav Kumar Nepal in the November CA poll. Deepak Kuinkel of the Nepali Congress defeated Krishna Gopal Shrestha of the UML.
This is the same constituency where NC heavyweight and former prime minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai had lost twice to CPN-UML candidates – first to its general secretary Madan Bhandari and later to his wife, Bidya Bhandari.
ADVERTISEMENT
The by-elections were held in constituencies that had been vacated by leaders who had also won in other constituencies as well.
The Election Commission used Electronic Voting Machine in all the four constituencies, enabling it to announce the outcome of the by-elections in 24 hours after the polls closed.
According to EC, the Nepali Congress won in Chitwan-4 (from where NC President and Prime Minister Sushil Koirala had won) and Kailali-6 (which elected NC’s Sher Bahadur Deuba) besides Kathmandu-2.
ADVERTISEMENT
The CPN-UML won again in Bardiya-1 where Bam Dev Gautam, now deputy PM and Home Minister, had won.
Twenty-six of the CA members are yet to be nominated.