Beijing: More than 135 political parties have been registered at Nepal`s Election Commission (EC) for new Constituent Assembly (CA) election that government plans to hold in November.
Out of the 139 political parties, 76 are new ones that were not in existence during the 2008 CA election. CPN-Maoist, a breakaway faction of UCPN (Maoist), has not registered its party at the EC, saying that election is not possible under the current circumstances.
"As election is not possible under current political situation, we did not register the party," CPN-Maoist spokesperson Pampha Bhusal told Xinhua.
According to the EC, a constitutional body mandated for holding national and local election, the number of political parties willing to register has significantly increased this time.
In the 2008 CA election, 84 parties had applied for the registration but only 74 parties formally got registered. Out of the 74 registered, 54 parties took part in 2008 election and 25 parties were elected to the CA.
Most of the registered parties are regional and ethnicity based. The EC has started the registration of political parties from May 01 and deadline expired on May 30. The EC has no plan of extending the deadline.
"Now we have no plan to extend the deadline but as some parties have not applied for registration we can address them," said EC spokesperson Bir Bahadur Rai.
With a purpose of reducing the number of political parties, the EC has required a new party to attach the signature of 10,000 supporters in its application for registration.
Under the existing laws, parties garnering 1 percent of the total cast votes would get a seat in the Constituent Assembly under the proportional representation system of election process.
ANI
