The Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) candidate Sobita Gautam has been elected to the House of Representatives from Chitwan-3 with the highest number of votes secured by any candidate so far in the ongoing election.

Gautam received 59,277 votes in the vote count that concluded on Saturday, defeating her nearest rival, Nepali Communist Party candidate Renu Dahal, by a margin of 38,662 votes. Dahal secured 20,615 votes.

Nepali Congress candidate Tek Prasad Gurung received 8,344 votes, while CPN-UML’s Shankar Thapaliya garnered 5,004 votes.

Gautam had previously been elected to the House of Representatives from Kathmandu-2 in the 2022 election with 15,229 votes. She contested from Chitwan-3 in this election.

Dahal, the daughter of former prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, had resigned as mayor of Bharatpur Metropolitan City to contest the parliamentary election.

In the 2022 election, Rastriya Prajatantra Party’s Bikram Pandey had won the Chitwan-3 seat with 35,060 votes. In the current election, the party’s candidate Deepak Thapa Magar secured only 1,226 votes.