The Election Commission has directed political parties to include at least one-third of women in their candidacies in the upcoming House of Representatives elections. The commission has directed political parties to improve on the trend of fielding a low number of women candidates in the direct elections.

The Commission had issued similar directives in the 2079 House of Representatives and Provincial Assembly elections. But political parties had disobeyed the directives. Due to the lack of clear and binding provisions in the law, the Commission could not strictly implement the directives. This time too, there is doubt that the Commission's directives will be implemented due to the lack of law. 

The House of Representatives Election Act stipulates that at least 50 percent of the total candidates should be women when submitting the closed list of candidates for proportional representation. The constitution has a provision that one-third of the members of the federal parliament should be women. A 'cluster' has been arranged under the federal parliament so that one-third of the women are elected to the National Assembly. In the House of Representatives, however, parties have been fielding fewer female candidates directly and selecting more women from the proportional list to reach one-third. 

In the 2079 House of Representatives elections, 5.5 percent of the candidates from the Congress and 7.8 percent from the UML were women. The Maoists fielded the highest number of women candidates, 17.4 percent. The Maoists, which contested the elections in the alliance, had fielded eight women in 46 constituencies. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) had fielded 9.2 percent of its candidates, the RPP 5.7 percent, and the JSP 8.9 percent. In the 2079 election to the House of Representatives, there were 2,412 candidates in 165 constituencies in the direct election. Of these, 225 were women. Only 9 women were elected directly. In the 2074 election to the House of Representatives, only 144 out of 1,925 candidates were women. Of these, only 6 were elected. Women leaders who have been raising their voices in favor of equal participation have been demanding that political parties field 50 percent of their candidates in the direct election as well. Political parties that continue to make the slogan of proportional inclusive representation an election issue have been ignoring such voices. UML leader Binda Pandey says that the situation will not improve unless the law makes it mandatory. ‘The commission’s directive is only a moral issue for the parties,’ she said, ‘The government is preparing to bring an ordinance to make necessary reforms in the election-related laws, and this provision should also be included in it.’ The team including Pandey has been ‘lobbying’ for this by meeting Prime Minister Sushila Karki and Election Commission officials.

Article 38(4) of the Constitution ensures the right of women to participate in all state bodies on the basis of the principle of proportional inclusion. Women constitute half of the population and voters. But there is no representation according to that. Women’s rights activists and politicians have been demanding proportional participation in every level, position and system of the state. 

The Women’s Commission had submitted a report to the then Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa in 2060 BS demanding one-third women’s representation in all sectors. At that time, Pandey was a member of the Women’s Commission. The interim constitution formed after the people’s movement had addressed the demands raised by women to some extent. Since then, women’s representation in the Constituent Assembly had increased since the candidacy.