Boots for booths

There are still chances of vote-rigging in remote districts like Bajura and Bajhang.

The foundational responsibility of any democratic state is to ensure that every citizen gets to cast their ballot without undue pressure. Yet, as Nepal gears up for the March 5 snap elections, this responsibility may not be uniformly honoured. For the voters in the restive fringes—remote districts like Bajura and Bajhang—the democratic exercise feels like a recurring nightmare. In these areas, the act of voting has historically been a spectator sport where local strongmen dictate the outcome while voters are sidelined by intimidation. If the government and security forces are to claim the legitimacy of the electoral process as ‘free and fair’, they must move beyond the optics of deployment of security officials and confront the entrenched culture of booth capture and ballot manipulation in these areas.