Nepal’s around 18.9 million eligible voters will exercise their voting rights on March 5, to elect 165 House of Representative members through direct voting (first past the post) system and 110 HoR members through proportionate voting. The Lower House of Parliament has in total 275 Lawmakers. There are altogether 18,903,689 eligible voters for the March 2026 election, including 915,119 newly registered voters as compared to the last Parliamentary Election of 2022. While there are around 3,400 candidates under the direct voting system, 3,200 are under proportionate system seeking to get elected during the upcoming general election.
The Election Commission will deploy around 213,000 staff and the government will deploy around 330,000 security personnel for conducting the election in a smooth manner, according to Narayan Prasad Bhattarai, spokesperson at the Election Commission.
Three tires of election security is being arranged under the coordination of Nepal Army for conducting the election in a free and fearless manner. Besides 80,000 plus Nepal Army personnel, the government will deploy Armed Police Force and Nepal Police personnel including around 100,000 temporary election police on the day. Nepal Army will also deploy four helicopters for air patrolling on polling day.
The Election Commission is engaged with full swing preparations for conducting the election through around 10,500 polling stations and 23,112 polling booths during the election.
“The Election environment is encouraging and we have mobilized all necessary mechanism to conduct the election on time in an impartial manner,” Bhattarai said during a weekly press briefing to media persons in Kathmandu on Sunday. The Election Commission is printing ballot papers for the upcoming election in a war-footing, according to Bhattarai. Printing of almost all the ballot papers have been completed for proportionate voting system, while one third of the ballot papers have been printed under the direct voting system, he said.
“We have received indication that the international community believe that the election will be conducted in a free and fair manner,” he pointed out. “The Kathmandu based diplomatic missions and the chiefs of various agencies under the United Nations have been informed about the preparations made for the upcoming elections through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” he said.
The Election Commission is currently engaged in spreading election education to all the voters across Nepal through facebook, Twitter (X) and Youtube by disseminating 158 awareness materials, he added.
We are also strictly monitoring the implementation of election code of conduct and assistant chief district officers in all 77 districts across the country have been nominated as election code monitoring officers, Bhattarai said.
The Election Commission has alloted time for carrying out election campaign for the candidates from February 18 to March 2 or the HoR election.
