Rastriya Swatantra Party Secures Near Two-Thirds Majority in House of Representatives Election

Kathmandu. The Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) has secured a number of seats close to a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives election held under difficult circumstances. In the election held on Falgun 21, the RSP won 125 seats under the first-past-the-post system. The RSP also has a clear dominance in the proportional representation category.

In the proportional representation category, the RSP secured 57 seats with 5,113,984 votes. Thus, the RSP has captured 182 seats in the 275-member House of Representatives, which is a number close to a two-thirds majority.

The Nepali Congress won a total of 38 seats (18 direct and 20 proportional), CPN-UML won 25 (9 direct and 16 proportional), CPN (Maoist Center) won 17 (8 direct and 9 proportional), Shram Sanskriti Party won 7 (3 direct and 4 proportional), and RPP won 5 (1 direct and 4 proportional).

Among the six parties that received national party status, the RSP received over four and a half lakh more votes than the other five parties combined. While the RSP received 5,113,984 votes in proportional representation, the Nepali Congress received 1,728,748 votes, and CPN-UML received 1,434,809 votes.

Similarly, CPN (Maoist Center) received 785,701 votes, Shram Sanskriti Party received 384,836 votes, and RPP received only 327,347 votes.

The total votes received by the five parties other than the RSP in the proportional representation category amount to 4,661,441 votes. The difference when subtracting the votes received by the other five parties from the 5,113,984 votes received by the RSP comes out to be 452,543 more votes.

With this, the RSP, formed just three and a half years ago, has received a ‘mandate’ to form a stable government by winning the most seats in the history of the parliament.

Although 67 parties participated in the election, 61 parties failed to secure the 3 percent threshold vote in the proportional representation category and were deprived of representation in the parliament. According to the Election Commission, only the RSP, Nepali Congress, CPN-UML, CPN (Maoist Center), Shram Sanskriti Party, and RPP have received national party recognition.

The Election Commission has completed the vote counting for the proportional representation category, determined the number of seats each party will receive, and sent a letter requesting the political parties to select names from the closed list according to the rules and submit them to the commission by Sunday. Following the commission’s letter, political parties are busy preparing the names of those who will become parliamentarians through proportional representation.