Deuba elected Nepali Congress President (with Profile)

Kathmandu / March 7: Nepali Congress senior leader Sher Bahadur Deuba has been elected the party new President from the 13th General Convention. He was declared the new party president of the country’s oldest party through the run-off voting concluded late this evening. Deuba secured 1,822 to become the chief of the largest party in the present Legislature-Parliament of Nepal.

Deuba’s close contender party Acting President Ram Chandra Poudel garnered 1,296 votes. Of Of total 3,161 voters in the 13th national convention, only 3,140 have cast their vote in the run-off, according to NC Central Election Committee member Gopal Krishna Ghimire. Of the total vote 22 were invalid. He had been defeated to Girija Prasad Koirala in the race for the party presidency during the party’s 10th General Convention and with Sushil Koirala in the 12th General Convention. The NC General Convention decided to go for the run-off voting as no candidates in the election race (party Acting President Ramchandra Poudel, senior leader Deuba and General Secretary Krishna Prasad Sitaula) secured majority as per the party statute. This is the first time in the history of Nepali Congress that it exercised the run-off election to choose the president. In the first-round of the election, Deuba secured 1,564 votes against 1,152 votes of his nearest competitor Poudel.

Though Deuba led the first-round election, just 11 votes were insufficient for him to become the party president at that time. The third candidate Sitaula had just 324 votes.

Poudel was considered as the leader of establishment faction. Leader Deuba splinted the party and again joined the party and was being blamed for promoting groupism in the party. Many leaders of establishment faction Arjun Nurshing KC, Kul Bahadur Gurung and Govinda Raj Joshi among other have joined the Deuba faction saying Poudel can’t bring unity in the party. Deuba lost the election of party president during the 12th convention against Sushil Koirala.

The newly elected Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba was born in June 12, 1947 at Rubi Khola Asigram-5 in Dadeldhura, one of the remote districts of Nepal.

He forayed into politics through the democratic student movement and went on to become the first President of Nepal Students Union, the student wing of Nepali Congress. He joined active politics from the inspiration of Nepal’s legendary democratic socialist leader and Nepali Congress founder BP Koirala.

He was inspired to join politics since the then king Mahendra Shah enforced Panchayat system in 1960. A graduate in Political Science from Tribhuvan University, Deuba is a research fellow in the same subject in the London School of Economics, UK.

Married to Dr Arzoo Rana Deuba, who is also parliamentarian, Deuba has only one son. Deuba represented Dadheldhura district as a Member of Parliament thrice in 1991, 1994 and 1999. He was elected Constituent Assembly (CA) member from the same district in 2008 and 2013. Deuba, who once served as the Minister for Home Affairs, has assumed the head of the government role for three times.

He first served as a Prime Minister in 1995 for two year term. He once again became Prime Minister in 2002 and 2004.

Deuba was the President of Nepali Congress (Democratic) as the NC once had split into two parties. He was also Chairperson of a high-level mechanism formed to resolve the Maoist problem in 1999. RSS