51 Parties Fall Short of Votes Needed for National Party Status

Following the completion of vote counting for the proportional representation segment of the House of Representatives (HoR) elections, 51 of the 57 participating parties failed to meet the minimum threshold required for parliamentary representation.

In the elections held on March 5 under the proportional representation system, only six parties secured enough votes to enter parliament. The Election Commission (EC) has clarified that parties must receive at least three percent of the total valid votes to be granted seats.

Deputy Spokesperson of the EC, Kul Bahadur GC, explained that the law treats the entire country as a single electoral constituency. This means candidates from a party can be elected to the HoR based on the total votes their party receives nationwide.

Out of 17,039,115 valid votes counted under proportional representation, the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) leads with 5,103,923 votes. Other parties that crossed the threshold include the Nepali Congress (NC) with 1,749,583 votes, CPN (UML) with 1,404,854 votes, Nepali Communist Party (NCP) with 805,773 votes, Shram Sanskriti Party (SSP) with 378,649 votes, and Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) with 329,472 votes.

The remaining 51 parties did not secure enough votes to qualify for parliamentary seats. -- RSS