Voting for 618 municipal seats in 36 municipalities in 28 districts around the country ended on Wednesday evening amidst reports of violence and protests by seven agitating political parties.

Reports from various districts depicted minimal turnout but the Election Commission (EC) said encouraging number of voters went to polling booths despite the difficult situation.

According to the EC, around 45,000 out of the total 300,993 voters cast their votes in Kathmandu Metropolitan city while 17,844 people (around 20 percent) cast votes in Lalitpur Sub-metropolitan City while 9000 votes (over 30 percent) were cast in Kirtipur Municipality.

Likewise, 30,262 voters cast their votes in Biratnagar Sub-metropolitan City, 21,634 in Birgunj Sub-metropolitan City and 9,288 (over 49 percent) voters cast their votes in Siraha Municipality, according to the EC.

Similarly, 5,737 voters cast the ballots in Malangawa Municipality, 4,700 in Kamalamai and 4,952 votes (33 percent) were cast in Siddhartanagar Municipality.

Turnout in Pokhara Sub-metropolitan City, Lekhnath Municipality, Hetauda, Mechinagar and Dhangadhi and Dhankuta municipalities was very low, according to reports.

The voting began at 8:00 a.m. and closed at 5:00 p.m.

There are over 4,000 seats in 58 municipalities in the country. All candidates filing their nominations in 22 municipalities were declared elected unopposed earlier. 1,040 polling booths were set up, mostly in schools, for the voting.

“The voting completed in a good atmosphere and the government made proper arrangement of security during the polls. Encouraging number of voters went to cast their votes despite various rumours,” Chief Election Commissioner Keshab Raj Rajbhandari told the state-owned Radio Nepal.

EC spokesperson Tejmuni Bajracharya told Nepalnews after the completion of voting, the counting would begin from Thursday morning and the results are expected to come by Thursday evening.

Meanwhile, a meeting of the seven political parties held on Wednesday declared the municipal elections a “total failure”. The parties said the elections conducted amidst heavy clampdown on democratic political parties, human rights workers and the civil society activists was a mockery of democracy.