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Former Kathmandu mayor and rapper Balendra Shah-associated Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), continued to maintain a wide margin in the ongoing vote count. It is headed for a landslide victory in Thursday's parliamentary polls as it is already leading in 98 seats, with wins in 19 seats officially declared.
As per the Election Commission, vote counting is underway in 135 constituencies out of the 165 under the First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) category, as of Saturday morning. In the count, Balen's RSP is taking the lead as it has won 19 seats out of the 27 constituencies where the vote count under FPTP is already over. Vote counting is yet to start in three constituencies due to various reasons. As of 8 AM (NST), Balen's RSP has emerged victorious in 19 seats while maintaining leads in 98 seats. The Nepali Congress is in second place with four wins and leads in 11 seats, while the KP Sharma Oli-led CPN-UML (Communist Party of Nepal - Unified Marxist Leninist) has so far won one seat while maintaining leads in 11 places. The Nepali Communist Party (NCP) has also won one seat so far while maintaining leads in 11 seats. In Jhapa-5, Balendra Shah (Balen) is ahead of contender KP Sharma Oli by almost four times the votes. As per the Election Commission (till 8 AM), Shah has secured 34,863 votes while Oli is trailing with 9,068 votes. In Sarlahi-4, Nepali Congress President Gagan Kumar Thapa is trailing behind RSP's Amreshkumar Singh. As per the latest count, Singh has secured 11,383 votes while Thapa is behind with 6,952 votes. A total of 68 parties are in the fray in the March 5 election, with 3,406 candidates contesting under FPTP and 1,270 under the Proportional Representation (PR) category. There are a total of 110 seats under the PR category for which voters had cast their ballots separately on March 5. To form a single-party government, 138 seats are required in the lower house out of the 275 existing seats. With the vote count underway mainly for the FPTP category, Balen's RSP is expected to cross the simple majority mark. However, party vice-president Dol Prasad Aryal, in an interview with ANI on Friday, claimed the party would secure an absolute two-thirds majority. "One hundred and eight six. Yes, in total we are expecting one hundred and eighty-six seats in total," Aryal told ANI as he exited a counting centre on the outskirts of Kathmandu on Friday afternoon when asked about the number of seats they were expecting to win. A political party will need 186 seats to claim a two-thirds majority. (ANI)
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