Presidential election in Nepal today: Oli and Prachanda candidates contest, results will be announced by 7 pm

Presidential elections are being held in Nepal today. According to the local time, voting started at 10 am, which will continue till 3 pm. After this, the results of the election are expected to come by around 7 pm. Ramchandra Paudel from Nepal Congress and Subhash Chandra Nembang from Oli's party CPN-UML are the candidates for the post of President. The Election Commission said that all preparations for the polling have been completed in the Lhotse Hall of the Parliament House of Nepal.
Nepal's Chief Election Commissioner Mahesh Sharma Poudel told that the Election Commission has set up 2 polling booths for voting. Members of Parliament will vote at one of these booths. On the other hand, the members of the Legislative Assemblies across the country will vote in the second booth. All the MLAs have reached Kathmandu for voting.
However, Nepal Congress candidate Ramchandra Paudel is believed to be almost certain to become the President. He has the support of 8 parties including Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda's party. The CPN-UML candidate, Subhash Chandra Nembang, is expected to get support from his own party as well as independents. On the other hand, Rashtriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) has decided not to support any candidate on Wednesday.
There are 884 members in the Electoral College of Nepal. Of these, 275 members belong to the House of Representatives, while 59 members belong to the National Assembly. Apart from these, 550 members from the Legislative Assemblies across the country are also part of the Electoral College. In the election, the weightage of the vote of an MP is 79 while that of an MLA is 48. This means a total of 52,786 votes are to be cast for the Presidential election, in which the candidate who gets the majority will become the new President of Nepal.
Earlier, KP Oli's party Nepal Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), which was in alliance with Prime Minister Pranchad's party in the Government of Nepal, left the alliance on 27 February. In fact, Prachanda had decided to support the Nepal Congress candidate instead of the CPN-UML presidential candidate. After this Oli's party flared up and he withdrew his support from the government. At the same time, 4 ministers of the Rashtriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) including Nepal's Deputy Prime Minister Rajendra Singh Lingden have also resigned due to this.