“Overwhelmed” Nepal Woman Gives Birth While Voting for First Time

Jakarta Globe – AFP, November 20, 2013

Nepalese police stand guard as electoral commission workers prepare to count
 ballots at the electoral commission office in Kathmandu on November 20, 2013. AFP
Photo/Prakash Mathema)

A Nepalese woman, excited to be voting for the first time, said Wednesday that she went into labor and gave birth at a polling station during elections in the Himalayan nation.

Parbati Bhandari told AFP she was so keen to take part in polls on Tuesday to elect a constituent assembly that she walked 30 minutes to a polling station just six days before her due date.

“As this was my first time, I was excited to vote, but about an hour after I reached the polling station I had sudden pain in my lower belly,” the 20-year-old housewife said by phone.

Fortunately the polling booths were set up inside local government offices in the midwestern district of Myagdi that included a small health centre. Bhandari gave birth at the center to a healthy baby boy on Tuesday afternoon — then she cast her vote.

Bhandari said she was “overwhelmed” to have become a mother on the same day as elections for the assembly charged with writing Nepal’s post-war constitution and aimed at ending years of political instability.

Her husband, a migrant worker, has suggested she name their son Nirwachan, Nepali for election.

“I was extremely happy to give birth on this historic day,” she said. ”But seeing a constitution completed… will make me even happier.”

Agence France-Presse