The Election Commission on Friday extended the voter registration deadline by five days, citing a surge in applicants.

According to Election Commissioner Sagun Shumsher JB Rana, the deadline for voter registration is now extended until November 21. The original deadline was ending on Sunday.

Earlier on Friday, Prime Minister Sushila Karki asked the poll body to extend the voter registration deadline. According to her secretariat, she talked to Acting Chief Election Commissioner Ram Prasad Bhandari and urged him to extend the deadline.

The commission had earlier set the voter registration deadline until November 16 for the House of Representatives election scheduled for March 5.

Prime Minister Karki made the request, citing the high turnout at registration centres.

The commission started allowing new registrations based on National ID details from Thursday. Around 38,000 new voters were added within 24 hours of integration of biometric details from the NID servers, the commission said.

Karki also inquired about technical issues with the commission’s servers.

Bhandari said efforts were underway to resolve the issues.

Earlier, the poll body said that extending the voter registration deadline could disrupt the election schedule and affect the polls scheduled for March 5.

In their meeting with Prime Minister Karki on Wednesday, officials at the commission had said there was no need to extend the deadline as arrangements had been made for registrations 12 hours a day, starting at 7 am. The prime minister’s office on Monday had requested the commission to reconsider the voter identity registration deadline if necessary.

As per the election laws voter registration must cease once the election dates are announced. But the commission, by revising the law through an ordinance, allowed it until November 16.

As per the commission’s official report, several of its plans are directly related to the number of voters. The polling centres and stations are determined based on the number of voters, while the number of staff and security personnel varies depending on such centres and stations.