Bidhya Devi Bhandari from the ruling CPN-UML was on Wednesday elected Nepal’s first woman President, after she defeated her rival from Nepali Congress by more than 100 votes. Bhandari, 54, the vice-president of CPN-UML and widow of late general secretary of the party Madan Bhandari, secured 327 votes against 214 of her rival veteran Nepali Congress leader Kul Bahadur Gurung.
The new President will succeed incumbent Ram Baran Yadav, who was elected the first President of Nepal in 2008 after the country was declared a Republic. With the promulgation of the Constitution on September 20, it was required to elect a new President within a month of the commencement of the Parliament session.
Bhandari began her political career with a leftist student movement in 1979. She then acquired membership of CPN (ML), went underground and fought against the party-less Panchayat system from Morang district. She married the famed Communist leader Madan Kumar Bhandari. After the end of the Panchayat system and restoration of multi-party democracy in 1990, CPN (ML) became CPN (UML) after unification with CPN (Marxist) and her husband became General Secretary of the unified party. Madan’s mysterious death in a jeep accident in 1993 led to her second inning in politics. She contested against former PM Krishna Prasad Bhattarai and defeated him.