KATHMANDU: The Supreme Court (SC) on Friday issued an order to the Election Commission (EC) for an arrangement to ensure representation of people with disabilities in the House of Representatives (HoR) election.

A division bench of Justices Hari Prasad Phuyal and Tek Prasad Dhungana made this verdict to mandatorily include the names of people with disabilities in the closed list of the political parties.

The SC verdict stated that the political parties that submitted their closed list in the EC for the proportional representation system should include the people with disabilities as per the constitution and has asked the EC to reexamine the closed list to confirm the participation of the people with disabilities and ensure the participation in the parties’ closed list if the political parties failed to comply with the provision.

Madhav Prasad Chamlagain, former lawmaker Prakash Pantha and other activists had lodged a writ petition at the SC demanding the rightful representation of the disabled people in the HoR.

As per the recent National Population and Housing Census, the total population of disabled people in the country is 647,744 (2.2 percent of the total population).