In this year's House of Representatives elections, the RSVP has won the most seats, 125 out of 165, directly. This success is the highest since the restoration of democracy in 2046, which has changed the political landscape of the country. However, behind such a historic victory, there is also the most unbalanced result that the direct election system can give, which has not been discussed much.

The RSVP candidate received only 44.5 percent of the votes directly, but with the strength of that vote, it has won about 76 percent of the seats in parliament. That is, the RSVP received less than two votes out of every four, but has three-fourths of the seats in parliament. This gap of more than 31 percentage points between the number of votes received and the number of seats is evidence of the unequal and unbalanced results that the direct election system gives.

To understand this easily, let's see how many votes the parties needed to take one of their candidates to Singha Durbar directly in this election. Out of the approximately 10.4 million votes cast in the direct election, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) won 125 seats by securing 4.649 million votes. That is, an average of about 37,000 votes per seat. While the Congress needed more than 110,000 votes (three times more) to win a seat, and the UML needed 180,000 votes (five times more than the RSS), the RPP, a party that favors the monarchy and the Hindu state, needed 206,000. One election, one ballot paper: However, the value of your vote was determined based on which party you voted for.

When analyzing the votes of the parties that won at least one seat in the direct election and the seats they won, the RSS is the only party that won more seats in proportion to the votes. The Congress, which received about 20 percent of the votes, won 10 percent of the seats, and the UML, which received 15 percent of the votes, won 5 percent of the seats. The NCP, the Shram Sanskriti Party, and the RPP also failed to win seats in proportion to the votes they received.

This is not the first time that the Congress has been punished in terms of the vote and seat ratio. Earlier, the Congress was punished in the same way in 2074 BS. The difference is that at that time, the UML and to some extent the Maoists benefited the most.

This is a first-past-the-post system, which often does not give balanced results. It does not give equal importance to every vote. This time, whether you win by a margin of five votes like in Okhaldhunga or by a margin of 50,000 like in Rupandehi-3, or by a margin of 2,005 votes like Tek Bahadur Gurung of Manang or Balendra Shah of Jhapa-5, who won with the highest number of 68,000 votes, all have the same value in the parliament.

Of the 86 people who got the most votes in this election, all except Hark Sampang are from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which shows how overwhelming their presence has been. They won by a margin of thousands of votes over the opposition candidates in one constituency after another. Although the RSVP's votes are more than the combined votes of the opposition candidates in many constituencies, there are some constituencies where the RSVP candidates have won by a small margin.

In some constituencies, including Okhaldhunga (a margin of five votes, where the opposition's combined votes are three times more than the RSVP candidates), Gulmi-2 (a margin of about 550 votes), Baglung-2 (about 800), Sindhuli-1 (about 1100), the winning margin of the RSVP candidates is less. In 36 constituencies, the combined votes of the Congress and UML are more than those of the RSVP candidates. Thus, in some constituencies, the vote difference is small or the votes are divided among other candidates in additional constituencies, so the share of seats that the RSVP won in the House of Representatives after winning is more than its votes.

In the 2074 elections, when the Congress had the highest vote share of about 36 percent, it had won only 13 percent of the seats, while the UML had 48 percent of the votes. In that election, the Congress needed an average of 156,000 votes to win a seat, four times more than the UML.

The 2079 election produced very different results. In that election, where the vote was divided among many parties, the direct election system probably produced the most balanced result, in terms of the ratio of votes received to seats. Although the UML and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) suffered some losses, they were relatively small. The Congress and the Maoists benefited slightly.

The same election system that produced relatively balanced results three years ago produced perhaps the most unbalanced result in Nepal's democratic history this time. The current election has established the dominance of one party. When the final election results are out, the proportional system will improve this index somewhat.