The 7,000 voters in Manang and the 187,000 voters in Ramechhap elect one MP each.
What you should know
There are only 7,000 voters in the Himalayan district of Manang. There are 27 times more voters in Ramechhap. One member each of the House of Representatives is elected from both districts. Both members have equal rights and service facilities in parliament. Both have the right to become ministers or prime ministers.
The 275 members of parliament representing the people in the sovereign parliament have equal rights. However, when they are elected, there is a large difference in the number of voters who vote in the respective constituencies.
It is considered a general basic principle of democracy that every voter has the right to equal voting rights. Therefore, the constituencies should be determined in such a way that the population difference between each constituency is reduced, if not equal as much as possible. However, the constituencies have been determined in such a way that there is a difference of up to 27 times within the country. The hilly and mountainous regions have a small population spread over a large geography. The constituencies of the hilly districts have a geographically larger area than the constituencies of the Terai or Kathmandu.
The least number of voters in the country is in Manang. Manang is spread over an area of 2,246 square kilometers. The district occupies 1.53 percent of the total area of Nepal. Morang and Jhapa, which are geographically smaller than Manang, have 6 and 5 constituencies respectively. Despite their small geography, they have a large population, so there are many constituencies in those districts. Morang has an area of 1,855 square kilometers and Jhapa has an area of 1,606 square kilometers. The district with the highest number of voters is Ramechhap. Where 187,952 voters will elect one representative. Ramechhap's geography is also smaller than Manang's, only 1,546 square kilometers.
Out of 6,779 voters, 4,846 votes were cast in Manang for the 2079 House of Representatives election. Tek Bahadur Gurung of Nepali Congress won by getting 2,575 votes. There were 80 constituencies with more invalid votes than the number of votes Gurung won when he won. This time, Mustang has 11,328 voters. The total number of voters in the 2079 election was 10,957. Out of which 7,258 votes were cast.
Another district with less than 25,000 voters is Dolpa. In the previous election, out of 22,774 voters, 17,887 voted and sent representatives to the parliament. This time, there are 24,115 voters in Dolpa, 34,372 in Humla, and 36,313 in Mugu.
One of the constituencies that has become famous this time is Rukum (Eastern part). Nepali Communist Party coordinator and former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal is a candidate from this constituency. The total number of voters in the constituency is 34,772. According to the data from the previous election, 20,753 voters out of a total of 34,112 voters exercised their franchise. While Ravi Lamichhane, the president of the National Independent Party, won from Chitwan-2 with a margin of votes greater than the total number of voters here. His margin of victory was 34,312. Mugu has 36,313 voters and Rasuwa has 41,471 voters.
Kathmandu-1 is also among the 8 constituencies with less than 50,000 voters. There are 48,489 voters here. There were 45,180 voters in the previous election. 26,978 votes were cast. In the last election, the votes polled by UML Chairman and former Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, who won from Jhapa-5, were more than the total voters of Kathmandu-1. Oli polled 52,319 votes. Oli's margin of victory was also greater than the votes polled in Kathmandu-1. Oli won by a margin of 28,576 votes.
Jhapa-5 constituency is in even more news this time. Balendra Shah has resigned from the post of mayor of Kathmandu and has reached the same constituency to challenge Oli as the candidate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Last time, the total voters of the constituency were 154,289. This time, it has increased to 163,379. This number is more than the combined total of the six constituencies of the House of Representatives, namely Manang, Mustang, Dolpa, Humla, Rukum (Eastern part) and Mugu. The total number of voters in all six constituencies is 147,618. There are 20 constituencies, including Jhapa-5, whose voter turnout is more than the total number of voters in the six constituencies in the Himalayan districts.
Another popular constituency this time is Sarlahi-4. Party President Gagan Thapa, who is proposed as the next Prime Minister by the Nepali Congress, is a candidate from there. There are 121,000 voters in that constituency. Similarly, whether it is the 5 constituencies in Jhapa or the 4 in Sunsari. All constituencies have more than 130,000 voters. Except for a few, all constituencies in the Terai have an average of more than 100,000 voters. Some districts in the hills also have constituencies with more than 100,000 voters. The number of constituencies with voters above 100,000 is 123. Of these, 59 constituencies have voters between 100,000 and 125,000. 46 constituencies have voters between 100,000 and 150,000 and 18 constituencies have voters above that.
Out of the 15 constituencies in the Kathmandu Valley, 13 constituencies, except Bhaktapur-1 and Lalitpur-3, have less than 100,000 voters. Kathmandu-1 has 48,489 voters. There are 18 constituencies with 3 times more voters. Bhaktapur-1 has the highest number of voters in the Valley with 107,054 voters. There are 1,185,374 voters in the three districts within the Kathmandu Valley. On average, 79,000 voters elect one representative.
The total number of voters in the 8 districts of Madhesh Province - Saptari, Siraha, Dhanusha, Mahottari, Sarlahi, Rautahat, Bara and Parsa - is 3,636,414. There are 32 constituencies of the House of Representatives in this province. On average, one MP is elected from 113,000 voters. The number of voters elected from Kathmandu Valley and Madhesh is not equal. On average, MPs from Madhesh carry 34,000 more voters than MPs elected from Kathmandu.
Nepal Sadbhavana Party, which has raised the issue of Madhesh in politics, has been opposing the division of constituencies based on unequal voters, whether it is the Janata Samajwadi Party Nepal or the Janmat Party. In the 2048 general election, Sadbhavana had raised the issue of division of constituencies based on equal population and geographical and cultural homogeneity. Since then, the issue has been raised continuously. In the manifesto issued by JSP Nepal for the 2082 elections, it has also said that the determination of constituencies should be based on population. For this, amendments were made to the Interim Constitution of 2063 and the Constitution of 2072 issued by the Constituent Assembly after repeated agitations. Although the constitutional amendment has made some improvements, the issue of not determining constituencies in the Terai districts in proportion to the population is still alive as a political issue.
The Madhesh rebellion that took place in Magh 2063 had added the subject of 'federal system of governance' to the Interim Constitution. Similarly, the provision for determining constituencies in such a way that the ratio between districts and the number of members is as equal as possible based on the population determined by the national census was made in the Interim Constitution. The constitutional amendment passed on 25 Falgun 2063 increased the number of seats in the Constituent Assembly in Madhesh. The constitution promulgated on 3 Asoj 2072 was opposed by Madhesh parties. The country had to endure a six-month-long agitation and blockade. Even then, one of the major political issues of the Madhesh parties was the determination of constituencies based on population. The first amendment to the constitution was made on 9 Magh, four months after the constitution was promulgated.
Articles 84 and 286 of the constitution were amended to determine constituencies based on population and geographical suitability and uniqueness. It was written in the constitution that population is the main basis and geography is the second basis when determining constituencies. Along with this, the parties that carry the cause of Madhesh have been feeling cheated by the constitutional provision that there will be at least one constituency in each district.
On 5 Shrawan 2074, the government formed a commission under the leadership of former Supreme Court Justice Kamal Narayan Das for the purpose of determining constituencies. The commission led by Das worked for one and a half months and prepared a blueprint of 165 constituencies and submitted it to the government. Which is currently in implementation. There is a constitutional provision that no question can be raised in any court regarding the determination of constituencies by the Commission. There is a constitutional provision that the constituency once determined must be reviewed every 20 years.
The basic principle of democracy is that each voter has equal voting power. Article 286 (5) of the Constitution provides that the House of Representatives constituency of each province shall be determined on the basis of population as the main basis and geography as the secondary basis, and that there shall be at least one constituency in each district within the province. As per the constitutional provision that the constituency of the Provincial Assembly member shall be double the number of constituencies of the House of Representatives in the respective province, a total of 330 Provincial Assembly constituencies have been determined in all 7 provinces.
The constituencies were determined based on the 2068 census. At that time, the total population of the country was 26.494 million, 504. In terms of equal population, 160,572 people should have been in one constituency. The Commission used its discretion to determine the constituencies by giving 90 percent of the population and 10 percent of the geography to the entire country. The Himalayan region occupies 15 percent of the total area of Nepal, the hilly region 68 percent and the Terai region 17 percent. The population is higher in the Terai. According to the latest census, 53.61 percent of the population lives in the Terai, 40.1 percent in the hills and 6.08 percent in the mountains. There are 78 constituencies in the Terai districts.
The then member of the commission, Madhav Adhikari, says that the constituencies were determined based on the constitutional provision that each district should have at least one constituency, population and geography. ‘According to the constitution, one constituency had to be allocated to each of the 77 districts, regardless of the population. That means that even the less populated districts got one constituency,’ he told Kantipur. ‘While determining the constituencies, the population was considered as the basis, not the voters. It would have been more practical if the voters had been considered.’ When asked why there are fewer voters in the Kathmandu constituency and more voters in the Terai constituency, he adds, ‘The constituency in Kathmandu has increased by considering the population as the basis. The population has increased since people from all over the country have settled here, but the voters are fewer. If it had been done on the basis of voters, only 7 constituencies would have been maintained in Kathmandu, and more would have been added in the Terai.’
Stating that there is a practice in many parts of the world to determine constituencies based on the number of voters, he said that this is why it will give practical and real results. The census is conducted every 10 years. The voter list is renewed every year. The process of adding and removing names from the voter list is a continuous process. The constituencies were determined according to the 2068 census, and it has been 4 years since the 2078 census. However, the constituencies remain according to the old census. The official said that due to the constitutional provision that constituencies should be reviewed only after 20 years, the constituencies cannot be reviewed even after the results of the new census are out. He mentioned that if the constituencies are reviewed immediately after the census, real representation can be achieved.
The debate on whether representation in the House of Representatives should be based on population or geography is a very old one. Analyst Tulanarayan Sah says that since the division of 75 districts during the Panchayat period was not based on population but on geography, inequality in representation still exists. He said that the inequality in representation started since the creation of 20 districts in the Terai, where about half of the total population lives, and 55 districts in the hills. ‘The district was considered the first unit of representation, and the population did not matter. Once a district was created, one elected member of the House of Representatives would come from it, even if the population of that district was only 7,000,’ he said. ‘Geography was given priority since the Panchayat period. That is why some districts in the hills with a large population and almost all districts in the Terai have suffered from the loss of representation.’
