Kathmandu: The village/municipal ward convention of the ruling Nepali Congress is starting from Friday in the lead-up to the upcoming 14th general convention of the party. The Central Election Committee (CEC) has stated that the ward convention will be held in the wards of 56 districts where the active membership list has been published so far.
According to Mahadev Prasad Yadav, coordinator of the election committee, district election officers have also been deployed in the districts where the list has been published. Necessary materials for the election have also been sent to all those districts.
About nine hundred thousand NC active members are voters of the party’s village/municipal ward conventions. As per the Congress statute, the active members elect the ward committee and regional representative of their ward. The ward convention will elect one chair, two deputy chairpersons, two secretaries and two joint secretaries. In addition, ward members and regional representatives will be elected in proportion to the number of voters.
According to Yadav, 47,201 office bearers and 121,681 members will be elected in all the 6,743 wards across the country. Similarly, 114,575 regional representatives will be elected from the wards.
Congress spokesperson Bishwaprakash Sharma shared that the active membership list of the remaining 21 districts would be published gradually and the convention of all the wards would be completed by the time the village/municipality convention scheduled for September 12.
The Congress statute provides for an eight-tier party structure including tole, ward, rural municipality/municipality, province assembly constituency, house of representatives constituency, district working committee, province working committee and central working committee.
Under the 14th General Convention, the Congress has scheduled the Village/Municipal Ward Convention on September 3, the Village/Municipal Convention on September 12, the Provincial Assembly Regional Convention on September 17 and the House of Representatives Regional Convention on September 21.
Similarly, Congress has decided to hold the district convention with more than one constituency on September 26, the province convention on October 27 to 29 and the central general convention on November 25 to 29.
The upcoming general convention of the Nepali Congress, which is about to take place after five and a half years, has been taken as a celebration by the party leaders and cadres.
After the country has moved to a federal structure, Congress has become the first party to practice internal democracy through elections to the lower echelons of the party. Earlier, the 13th General Convention of the Nepali Congress was held in February 2015. Leaders Sher Bahadur Deuba and Ram Chandra Poudel competed in the general convention and Deuba was elected as the president.
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