Kathmandu — The government is preparing to increase the minimum vote percentage (threshold) required for representation in the House of Representatives or Provincial Assembly through the proportional election system.

The government is amending the current legal provision that political parties that get at least three percent of the votes in the House of Representatives and 1.5 percent of the votes in the Provincial Assemblies will get seats under the proportional system, and has moved forward with the law amendment process by making a provision that political parties must get at least five percent of the votes in the House of Representatives and three percent of the votes in the Provincial Assembly to get proportional seats.

The draft of the bill has been sent by the Ministry of Home Affairs to the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs for consensus. The ‘threshold’ for proportional representation was kept unchanged in the draft bill sent by the Election Commission to the Ministry of Home Affairs on 18 Ashad 2080. However, the percentage of ‘threshold’ was increased while the Ministry of Home Affairs was modifying the draft.

A Home Ministry official said that the ‘threshold’ of the proportional electoral system has been increased in line with the seven-point agreement reached by the Congress and the UML on Ashad 17 for power sharing, which stated that ‘necessary amendments to the constitution for political stability and the formulation of laws accordingly will be given priority.’

Chief Election Commissioner Dinesh Kumar Thapaliya, however, said that there was no consultation with the Commission on the issue of changing the provision related to the ‘threshold’. ‘The Commission had sent the draft to the Home Ministry keeping the provision of the threshold unchanged,’ he said. The Commission had prepared a draft of the ‘Election Management Bill’ by integrating seven scattered laws related to elections and sent it to the Home Ministry.