India's CEC not visiting Kazakhstan during elections over pandemic concerns
Jan 05, 2021
New Delhi [India], January 5 : Ambassador of Kazakhstan to India Yerlan Alimbayev on Tuesday said though India's Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora was invited by the country to observe its upcoming elections, but no one from India is visiting due to COVID-19 concerns.
"We invited the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India to be an election observer for upcoming elections on January 10 in Kazakhstan, but this time no one from India is coming due to the COVID-19 pandemic," Yerlan Alimbayev, Kazakhstan Ambassador to India told ANI.
Legislative elections in Kazakhstan are scheduled to be held on January 10, 2021, to elect the members of the Majilis (a lower house of the Kazakh Parliament) and Maslikhats (local representative bodies).
The Majilis is the lower chamber of the Kazakh Parliament consisting of 107 members, who are elected for a five-year term. According to Kazakhstan's Central Election Commission, five political parties will run in the upcoming elections - "NurOtan", "AkZhol", "People's Party of Kazakhstan", "Auyl People's Democratic Patriotic Party" and"Adal Party" (former "Birlik Political Party"). Currently, the NurOtanparty has a majority of 84 members in the Majilis, the AkZhol and the People's party have 7 members each.
The previous elections to the Majilis were held in March 2016. Six political parties participated in the elections and three of them including the NurOtan (82.2 percent), the AkZhol Democratic Party of Kazakhstan (7.18 per cent), and the National Party, which is the former Communist People's Party of Kazakhstan (7.14 per cent), received more than 7 per cent of the votes and won the right to send their representatives to the lower chamber of the Kazakh Parliament.
