Timeline of Major Events

Date	Event
November 6	Supreme court rules Tharu to have no reservation in the civil service jobs
November 30	A total of seven women candidates, one Dalit and 35 Janajatis won the election of 2022 through First-Past-the-Post.

Women in the First-Past-the-Post

A total of eight women candidates won through First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) in the House of Representative (HoR). Rastriya Swatantra Party’s Sobita Gautam won from Kathmandu 2, Toshima Karki from the same party won from Lalitpur 3, CPN UML’s Bidya Bhattarai from Kaski 2, CPN’s (Maoist Center) Rekha Sharma from Kailali 1, Nagarik Unmukti Party’s Ranjita Shrestha from Dang 2, CPN-UML’s Juli Kumari Mahato from Dhanusha – 3, Nepali Congress’ Sita Gurung from Terhathum-1 and CPN UML’s Jwalakumari Sah from Bara-3. As for the provincial parliament, a total of 15 women candidates won.
Only a few women were provided with FPTP tickets by the political parties - 9.3% of total candidates nominated for the federal parliament and 8.7% of the total candidates nominated for the provincial assemblies. CPN UML, being the party with the highest number fielding women candidates, nominated 11 women candidates while CPN (Maoist Center) fielded seven and Nepali Congress, five. CPN (Unified Socialist) and Rastriya Janamorcha Party nominated one each. Thus unsurprisingly, only a handful of women got elected.
 
On the other hand, even prominent women candidates couldn’t pull off FPTP victories. Nepali Congress (NC) Joint General Secretary, Mahalakshmi Upadhyay from Makwanpur-1, former Deputy Speaker Pushpa Bhusal from Arghakhanchi, Deputy General Secretary and Minister for Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation, Pampha Bhusal from Lalitpur 3, former speaker Onsari Gharti from Kathmandu 2, secretary of the CPN (Unified Socialist) and former Minister for Urban Development, Ram Kumari Jhakri from Gulmi-2, all faced defeat. Prominent young female candidates, namely, Manushi Yami Bhattarai and Ranju Darshana also lost the election from Kathmandu 2 and 5 respectively. 
 

Misuse of Proportional Representation

As affairs of electoral coalitions became the major priority of mainstream political parties, other electoral agendas - especially inclusion - took a backseat. Beginning from the nomination, parties merely followed obligatory constitutional provisions, whilst lacking in their true commitment toward inclusion.
 
As seen in the case of the Nepali Congress (NC), which nominated one of the lowest percentages of women candidates, and is now having to fulfill the quota through the Party-list Proportional Representation (PR). The Nepali Congress has 99 members in the federal parliament - 89 in the Lower House and 10 in the Upper House. Out of 57 members of the federal parliament elected directly, only one is female and of 10 members in the National Assembly, 3 of them are women. And since one-third of total members of the parliament should be women, this compels the Nepali Congress to nominate at least 29 females under the PR category.
 
The November election also saw the misuse and manipulation of Proportional Representation system by influential patrons. While proportional representation is envisioned to ensure inclusion of underrepresented groups, it has been occupied by elite leaders of the likes of Arju Deuba, Bimalendra Nidhi and Prakash Sharan Mahat, among others. As now the NC will only be able to send three male candidates through the PR category, it can be speculated that the seats allocated for different inclusionary clusters will be occupied by those leaders who have been in the forefront of politics.
 
A similar case can be observed in provinces - a total of 14 women have been elected through the FPTP in seven different provincial assemblies, while none were elected directly (FPTP) in Karnali and Sudhurpaschim Provinces. So, in order to meet the 33% quota of women candidates, at least 181 women should be in the provincial parliament, which means 167 women representatives will have to be selected from the Proportional Representation in total.
Around 62 out of 126 ethnic groups in the country have never been represented in the parliament, as per a yet-to-be published report by the National Inclusion Commission, a constitutional body. The goal of the Proportional Representation system is to bring the diversity of society to the parliament. However, time and again, political leaders have capitalized on the existing loopholes for their individual gain or have simply chosen not to prioritize inclusion. This was also echoed in  the local election of May 2022, when political parties chose not to ensure women’s representation in either of the two top posts of each local body, as there are no constitutional norms to abide by for coalitions like individual parties.
Furthermore, the representation of Dalit and Janajatis have also been low. Thirty-five Janajatis and one Dalit have won the federal parliament seats under the FPTP. Now through the PR system, 15 Dalit members will have to be elected to meet the 13.8% seats allotted based on the 2011 national census, meaning a total of 16 Dalit representatives (or 5.8%) will be in the 275-member parliament. Since the election of 2008, this has been the lowest representation of Dalits in Parliament. Unlike women, there are no binding laws for the representation of other marginalized groups; furthermore, Dalits and Janajatis themselves lack the confidence and funds, borne from structural discrimination, to contest via FPTP resulting in a vicious cycle of under representation.

No Reservation for Tharu Community

On November 6, the supreme court ruled that the Tharu community will no longer get reservations in the country’s civil service commission. A division bench of justices ruled that the Tharu community did not need a separate quota as its members can also compete in the Madhesi and Janajati categories. Following a writ petition filed by Premilal Prasad Chaudhary of Tharu Kalyankari Sabha appealing the government to allocate 6.6% of the civil service seats for the Tharu Community, the court announced the aforementioned verdict. Tharus have long been discriminated against by the state; denying their underrepresentation in civil service and further squeezing them into the category of Madhesis and Janajatis is to deny their constitutional right of fair representation within the state apparatuses.