Voters began arriving at polling centres in Chitwan before dawn on Thursday, hours before voting for the House of Representatives election was due to start at 7am.

At the Chamelidevi Piya School polling centre in ward 3 of Bharatpur Metropolitan City, voters started gathering as early as 5:30am.

Chitwan has 162 polling stations and 492 polling centres across its three constituencies. A total of 442,082 voters are eligible to cast their ballots in the district, with women outnumbering men.

Of the total polling stations, 25 are categorised as highly sensitive, 93 as sensitive and 44 as normal.

In constituency 1, 18 candidates, including three independents, are in the fray. Constituency 2 has 23 candidates, including six independents, while constituency 3 also has 23 candidates, six of them independents.