AKIPRESS.COM - India will send two observers to monitor the early parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan, Ambassador of Kazakhstan to India Bulat Sarsenbayev told ANI in an interview on March 18.

The elections to members of the Mazhilis (lower house of the Parliament) and the Maslikhat (local municipalities) will be held on March 20.

Hailing India's long-term support to Kazakhstan and the expanding bilateral relationship between the two countries in the wake of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to his country in July last year, Ambassador Sarsenbayev said New Delhi has agreed to send Mrs. Saleema Singh, Chief Election Commissioner of Madhya Pradesh and Inderveer Singh, Editor of the Business Central Asia as international election observers for the March 20 polls.

"Kazakh citizens living in Delhi will also come to vote at the embassy. This election is important for both political as well as economic reasons. We were scheduled to hold the elections in autumn (November -December 2016), but our government and our president (Nursultan Nazarbayev) came to a view that holding two elections towards the end of the year would be very expensive and an economic drain," Ambassador Sarsenbayev told ANI.

He said that the 98 directly-elected members of the Mazhilis would be elected from a single nation-wide constituency via proportional representation with a seven percent electoral threshold. He said the seats would be allocated using the largest remainder method, and added that if the parties have equal largest remainders, the party that registered first would be awarded the parliament seat. He further said that if only one party crosses the threshold, the party with the second highest number of votes would be awarded at least two seats. Ambassador Sarsenbayev said that the Assembly of People, a body selected by the president, elects a further nine members.

The Kazakh envoy revealed that about 10,825 candidates would be contesting for seats in the Maslikhats (local legislatures), and all of them were busy making last minute appeals to voters across the nation.