Kathmandu, March 5: The elections for Nepal’s House of Representatives have concluded. Vote counting is set to begin late Thursday night. The Election Commission claims that results for 165 seats, determined by the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system, will be released within 24 hours of counting starting. However, they noted that it takes at least a day to collect ballot boxes from mountainous regions and transport them to counting centers, meaning the remaining results will be announced later.
According to major media outlet The Kathmandu Post, Acting Chief Election Commissioner Ram Prasad Bhandari expressed optimism that voter turnout could exceed 65%.
Voting commenced at 7 AM on Thursday across 23,000 centers in 77 districts and continued until 5 PM. This marks the first general election following the Gen-Z protests in September of last year.
The Election Commission reports that there are 18,903,689 registered voters, including 9,663,358 men, 9,240,131 women, and 200 individuals identifying as other.
Voters will elect 275 members to the lower house. Of these, 165 MPs will be elected via the FPTP system, while the remaining 110 seats will be filled through proportional representation.
The Gen-Z movement, which took place on September 8-9, 2025, resulted in 77 fatalities and led to the resignation of then-Prime Minister KP Oli. The protests caused damage exceeding 84 billion Nepalese Rupees to both private and public property.
Following the protests, uncertainty loomed over the country’s political landscape. However, the interim government led by Prime Minister Sushila Karki took steps to restore political stability and announced new elections.
Most candidates are over the age of 41, with 1,925 candidates aged between 41 and 60, and 425 senior citizens. There are also 201 candidates aged 30 or younger.
In the 2022 elections, voter turnout was 61.63%. This was a decrease from 68.67% in 2017, while the highest turnout was recorded in 2013 at 78.34%.