KATHMANDU, MAY 12Local polls will be held tomorrow in 753 local levels, including six metropolitan cities and 11 sub-metropolitan cities.

Voting will begin at 7:00am and end at 5:00pm. Govt to produce human resources for nutrition-friendly local levels Polls to be held on time, EC assures doubters As many as 17,733,723 voters are eligible to vote. Chief Election Commissioner Dinesh Kumar Thapaliya said at a press briefing here today that the Election Commission had completed all preparations for the polls.He said adequate provision had been made to ensure free and fair election.Thapaliya urged all citizens to exercise their voting rights without being influenced or intimidated by anybody.He also urged citizens to cast their votes in the right manner so that their vote did not become invalid.Assistant Spokesperson for the EC Surya Prasad Aryal said at a separate press briefing that differently abled people, pregnant women, and new mothers were allowed to use vehicles to cast their votes, but cautioned them not to allow others to misuse such vehicles.Aryal said that in most of the counting centres, CCTV cameras would be installed to ensure credible, transparent, and standard vote counting process.He said the Election Commission had done its bit to ensure that the poll code was strictly adhered to by issuing show cause notices to poll code violators.Aryal said the Election Commission issued a show cause notice to Keshav Sthapit, the CPN-UML candidate for the post of Kathmandu mayor for alleged poll code violation and his second reply was found satisfactory.Aryal said the committee formed to monitor social networking sites for any violation of poll code was doing its work and if anybody was found guilty of violation of poll code, they would be liable for punishment under cyber laws and election offence laws.According to Aryal, Maheshwar Kafle, who had seized 125 voter identity cards from government employee Harisharan Bhattarai in Ward No 1 of Tamakoshi Rural Municipality (Dolakha) has been arrested and indicted under election offence laws.A version of this article appears in the print on May 13, 2022, of The Himalayan Times. .

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