The Nepal Weekly 
April 12, 2022
The five year tenure of elected executives of the local bodies is going to complete soon by mid May 2022. The local elections held in 2017 were carried out in three phases on May 14, June 28 and September 18. It was the first local level election hold since the promulgation of the Constitution of Nepal 2015. The earlier elections for local bodies were held in 1997. That means Nepal did not have local governing bodies for 15 years. So as a lot of opportunities were missed due to lack of local leadership.
Nepal Government had announced the second local elections to be held on 13th May, 2022. All the elections for local representatives will be carried out in one phase only. The government decided to hold of the elections according to the Local Level Election Act which does not envisage a vacuum of elected leadership at the local level. The term of local level representatives is due to expire on May 19.
The Election Commission (EC) had said that there will be around 17.9 million voters in the forthcoming local level election. As per the constitutional arrangement, people above the age of 18 are eligible to cast vote in the election. There were over 15.4 million voters in the election held in 2017, the EC said that the number of voters has increased by 2.5 million in the past five years.
The forthcoming elections will elect mayors and deputy mayors for 6 metropolitan cities and 11 sub-metropolitan cities, 276 municipalities and chairperson and deputy chairpersons for 460 rural municipalities. Similarly 6,743 ward chairpersons and 26,972 ward members will be elected. Moreover, a ward in a local level have a chairperson and 4 members out of which 2 must be female with 1 one of them from the Dalit community. Nepali citizens who completed 18 years will cast their votes to choose the leaders exercising the constitutional provision while they can receive citizenship certificate after completing 16 year age.
Now, political parties have started home works on the finding suitable candidates while laymen also have begun talking the competent candidates who can carry the local agenda with priority.
Thus, people are now looking for the local leaders for their localities to lead better, make better and grow better. Competent candidate from any party
