Though the seven agitating political parties had boycotted the municipal polls of last Wednesday, voters in considerable numbers cast their votes on the election symbols of the major political parties during the poll, a newspaper report said on Sunday.

Symbols of the CPN-UML, Nepali Congress and Rastriya Prajatantra Party received a vast number of ‘votes’ in the municipal polls, reports Kantipur daily.

The paper quoted government officials involved in counting of ballots as saying that a sizable number of voters stamped on ‘sun’, the election symbol of the CPN-UML, ‘tree’ of the NC and ‘plough’ of the RPP. But the votes were pronounced invalid as these parties had boycotted the polls and fielded no candidates.

“It is estimated that more than one third of the votes cast were invalid,” an official said.

“Most of those disqualified votes were stamped on the election symbols of the national political parties who boycotted the polls.”

Spokesperson of the Election Commission (EC) Tej Muni Bajracharya hoped that they would be able to disclose all the data on it within a couple of days.

“We can’t now say on what basis the votes were disqualified,” he said, adding, “We will inform all when we receive the official officially from all concerned districts.”

The election symbols – sun, tree and plough – received significant number of votes in Kathmandu too. An official involved in vote counting in Kathmandu Metropolitan City told Kantipur that nearly 30 percent cast votes were disqualified.

“The voters forced to cast votes might have stamped on the symbols not to deviate from their ideological stand,” the official believed.

Nearly 21 percent people used their voting rights in the municipal elections.