The Election Commission on Sunday decided to hold the bypolls of the House of Representatives and the provincial assembly in April.

During the meeting, the commission decided to hold the elections on April 27 after a consultation with the government. Earlier, a team led by chief commissioner Dinesh Thapaliya had met with Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and other ministers concerned for their consent on the election dates.

“The elections in Ilam constituency-2 and Bajhang (A) for Sudurpaschim Provincial Assembly will be held on April 27, Saturday,” said Thaneshwor Bhusal, deputy spokesperson for the commission. “A meeting of the commission took the decision with government's consent."

The constitutional body had started preparations for the bypolls soon after conducting the National Assembly elections on January 25. One third members of the 59-strong upper house were elected from the election.

The commission has also ceased voter registration with the announcement of the election dates.

The Ilam-2 House of Representatives seat is vacant after the demise of former Speaker and Constituent Assembly chairman Subas Chandra Nembang. He died of a heart attack on September 13. The CPN-UML leader had continuously won the constituency since the 1999 general elections.

In the November 2022 poll, Nembang defeated his closest contender Dambar Bahadur Khadka of the Nepali Congress by a margin of 1,014 votes. While he garnered 30,020 votes, Khadka, who was a common candidate of the Congress-led alliance, managed to get 29,906.

Together with Ilam-2, elections will be held in the Bajhang (A) constituency of Sudurpaschim Assembly. The seat remains vacant after Prithvi Bahadur Singh, a provincial assembly member and also the provincial minister for internal affairs and law, was killed in a road accident in June.

Though around two dozen positions at the local level too remain vacant, the commission is yet to decide when to hold elections in the units. One position of the chief of the district coordination committee, a chair and a vice-chairperson of rural municipalities, and 17 ward positions are lying vacant. The number of ward members' vacant positions is even higher. The commission is still undecided about elections at the local level as there are no clear legal or constitutional provisions for by-elections at the local level, unlike in the case of the provinces and the federal parliament.

Article 84 (7) of the constitution says if the seat of any House member falls vacant more than six months before the tenure’s expiry, the vacancy is filled by the same electoral system through which the position was first held. The same applies to the provincial assembly as per Article 176 (8) of the constitution.

Though the parties have not made formal preparations, they have already started informal discussions for the bypolls, mainly in Ilam. There are speculations that the UML could field Suhang Nembang, the younger of the two sons of Subas, from the constituency. A lawyer by profession, Suhang has been active in party politics after the demise of his father. Suhang had taken part in the UML’s mid-hill march held in December.

Shiva Maya Tumbahangphe, a former deputy Speaker, and Buddhi Khanal too aspire to contest the seat from the UML.

CPN (Unified Socialist) leader and former prime minister Jhala Nath Khanal also wants to be in the fray. Khanal was defeated by UML’s Mahesh Basnet from Ilam-1 in the previous poll despite being a common candidate of the ruling alliance. Talking to the Post, Khanal said he would be interested in the election on the condition he becomes a unanimous candidate of the major parties. "Otherwise, I will not contest," he said.

As the Congress got the seat in sharing among the ruling parties in the 2022 polls, it will demand to make its candidate the alliance’s. The Rastriya Swatantra Party that won two out of the three bypoll seats in April last year had got over 4,000 votes from Ilam-2.