Two polling centres in Dang-3 has been without voters till noon in the elections taking place today.

So far, no ballots have been cast at the Deuti Secondary School Tallo Malaikhola polling centre in Babai Rural Municipality-7 and the Janata Basic School Jila polling centre in Babai-1.

Tek Bahadur Khadka, presiding officer at Tallo Malaikhola polling station, said that although preparations for voting had been completed since early morning, no voters had arrived to cast their ballots.

He said that although representatives had attended the earlier all-party meeting, no one had taken part in the voting.

Residents of the area, which lies in the buffer zone of Banke National Park, had earlier announced that they would not vote. They declared a boycott of the election, stating that political leaders had not visited the village, that there had been no development infrastructure despite repeated voting, and that the establishment of Banke National Park had made the village insecure.

Chiranjibi Khadka presiding officer at Jila based the Janata Basic School, said that no one had attended the all-party meeting and that locals had informed officials that they would boycott the election.

Khadka said residents had announced the boycott, accusing political leaders of ignoring them, failing to listen to people’s concerns and not taking any initiative for development.

There are 530 registered voters at the Tallo Malaikhola polling centre, including 274 men and 256 women.

Similarly, Jila polling centre has 682 voters, including 294 men and 388 women.

Deepak Giri of the Nepali Congress was elected from Dang-3 in 2022. He has contested again. Ghanshyam Pandey of the CPN-UML, Dhan Bahadur Maski of the Nepali Communist Party and Kamal Subedi of the Rastriya Swatantra Party are also contesting from Dang 3.

Maski, who was elected as a member of the Provincial Assembly from this constituency in the 2022 election, resigned from the post to contest in this election.