Kathmandu, Nepal, September 8, 2022: As political parties and candidates of the House of Representatives (HoR) and the provincial assemblies have intensified election campaign across the country for the November 20 election, the election campaign expenditure is being tracked by the Election Commission (EC) by mobilizing its own and other state mechanism.
The EC has said that election campaign spending is being monitored not only through the database developed in the EC but mobilizing the personnel of the Nepal Police and the National Intelligence Department in each constituency to keep track of the election expenditures of parties and individual candidates.
According to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Dinesh Kumar Thapaliya, the election campaign spending of candidates is being collected to match with the spending details submitted by individual candidates after the elections.
The EC has also set a plan to conduct an independent audit of candidates if their spending reports are found suspicious. For the purpose, the EC has also mobilized its own mechanism across the country, CEC Thapaliya said.
The EC has already set ceiling of the election campaign expenditure on the basis of the number of voters, the area a particular constituency and the number of polling centers through election code of conduct. As per these three parameters, HoR candidates can spend maximum amount of Rs3.3 million to minimum amount of Rs2.5 million.
Similarly, individual spending ceiling for the provincial assembly members is set ranges from Rs1.5 million to Rs2.3 million.
As many as 2,412 candidates are in the fray for 165 first-past-the-post (FPTP) seats of the HoR and 3,224 candidates are contesting for the 330 FPTP seats of the seven provincial assemblies.
Though the EC can annul their candidacy, terminate their election and even disqualify them from contesting in the future if someone is found guilty of breaching the code of conduct by spending than the set ceiling of expenditure, no punishment is taken yet though it is open secret that most of the candidates would not remain under the limit set by the EC.
As all candidates, regardless of resenting the parties or independent, have already intensified door-to-door campaign by reaching all the nooks and corner of their constituencies with huge number of their supporters, it would not possible to even to collected the election expenditure of the candidates.
