Kathmandu: President of Nepali Congress Sher Bahadur Deuba has won as the leader of the Congress parliamentary party. In the election held on Wednesday, Deuba, who is also the Prime Minister, won with 64 votes. General Secretary Gagan Thapa, who is competing with him, got 25 votes. 88 out of 89 MPs took part in the voting.
The then party President Girija Prasad Koirala promoted the young leader Deuba to the parliamentary party leader in 2051 BS. Being the leader of the party, he became the Prime Minister of the country at the age of 49.
In order to ease the equation within the party, President Koirala announced another leader Krishna Prasad Bhattarai as the prime ministerial candidate before the election in 2056 BS, and also gave way to become the prime minister for a brief period after the election. After Bhattarai and Koirala failed in managing the then Maoist armed conflict, Deuba became the Prime Minister for the second and third time.
Since the change of political course in 2062/63, Deuba become the Prime Minister for the fourth and fifth time. He has contested all the recent parliamentary party elections. After defeating Deuba in 2064 BS, Poudel became the leader of the party. However, even though he contested 17 times in Parliament for the position of Prime Minister, he did not win.
After the second election of the Constituent Assembly in 2070 BS, Deuba was also defeated in the competition with the then party President Sushil Koirala. After the death of Sushil, Deuba was elected as the President in the 13th Congress, and in the meantime, he also became the Prime Minister.
After the 2074 BS election, he was elected as the leader of the parliamentary party. At that time, Prakash Man Singh was in the field in the competition with Deuba. When Prakash Man moved forward, Gagan supported him by being in the forefront. Now, when Gagan came to the field, Prakash Man did not appear in his favour.
This time, senior leader Ramchandra Poudel, who has been raising the voice of leadership change for a long time, dropped the issue and sat as Deuba’s proponent. Party Vice President Purna Bahadur Khadka was a supporter of Paudel’s proposal. Thapa was proposed by senior leader Dr Shekhar Koirala while Vice President Dhanraj Gurung, General Secretary Bishwa Prakash Sharma and youth leader Pradeep Poudel supported him.
