Elections 2022
The election of independent candidates in the most coveted municipal seats of the country has set off a race of new players, unaffiliated with political parties, on a path to the parliament.
In local elections of May 2022, Kathmandu mayor Balen Shah defeated partisan stalwarts with a wide margin of about 20,000 votes. Dharan and Dhangadi elected independent mayors as well.
Taking cues from the elections, a number of independent candidates, and those offering non-partisan alternatives, are announcing their candidacies for November parliamentary elections.
In the federal elections of 2017, mainstream communist parties, CPN-UML and CPN-M, had formed an alliance that later culminated into Nepal Communist Party (NCP) - which broke apart only last year. Unified, the communists swept many incumbents off their parliamentary seats and diminished the chances of independent and alternative candidates to win the upper-tier elections.
With the two left parties now splintered into three, Nepali Congress got to lead a coalition government and conduct the local elections, securing more seats for each of the coalition partners, perhaps, than they would have secured if each had gone to the polls alone.
As political parties acted strange, coming together as bedfellows and breaking apart for assorted reasons, voters endorsed the independent and alternative candidates.
The merger of the mainstream communists had diminished the chances for alternative candidates to win the elections, Pukar Bam, the former Bibeksheel Sajha candidate from Kathmandu-8 in the 2017 elections, admitted. Bam added that in this election cycle, independents had better odds against the mainstream party candidates.
Asked how independent winners would make laws without support from parties, Bam said that independent candidates were having coordination meetings and, once elected, they would form an alliance among themselves, and deal with other parties.
At present, only six of the 112 registered political parties in Nepal, are in the mainstream, with considerable representations in federal, state, and local bodies.
In that backdrop, NepalMinute queried five independent and alternative candidates announcing their candidacies for the upcoming parliamentary elections. Their race will be worth watching.
Ranju Darshana
On July 3, 2022, Ranju Darshana announced that she would contest the November elections from Kathmandu-5. On her social media post, along with her candidacy announcement, Darshana launched a poll targeted at a possible grassroots campaign.
Ranju Darshana had drawn a lot of attention as the youngest mayoral candidate of Kathmandu, at just 21, in 2017 local elections. She secured the third place, with 23,439 votes, on behalf of her comparatively new party, Bibeksheel Nepali Daal. She has since left the party but remains an avid activist, campaigning and supporting various progressive and social justice movements.
Kathmandu-5 covers wards 2, 3, 4 and 5 of Kathmandu metropolis; wards 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 of Budhanilkantha municipality; and wards 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 of Tokha municipality. The constituency is currently represented in the federal parliament by former Minister of Defense Ishwar Pokhrel of CPN-UML.
In the 2017 general elections, Ujjwal Bahadur Thapa had competed against Ishwar Pokhrel, as a candidate for Bibeksheel Sajha Party, which resulted from a merger of Bibeksheel Nepali Daal and Sajha Party. Ishwar Pokhrel won that election, and Ujjwal Bahadur Thapa managed to secure 6,853 votes against Pokhrel’s 23,029 votes.
Pukar Bam
Another candidate testing the waters for independent politics this time is Pukar Bam, a Bibeksheel Sajha Party alum like Darshana. He will be contesting against Prakash Man Singh, the incumbent representative from Kathmandu-1. Bam is an activist and also a teacher, known for his hunger strike, protesting Nepal Government’s ‘irresponsible attitude’, in his words, during the pandemic most recently.
Bam was a candidate from Bibeksheel Sajha Party in the 2017 elections. He challenged the incumbent of Kathmandu-8, Nabindra Raj Joshi. But in a twist of fate Joshi did lose his seat, but to another candidate from CPN-UML, Jeevan Ram Shrestha, with a difference of just 434 votes. While the candidates from UML and Congress got more than 10,000 votes each, Bam just got 4,414 votes.
Kathmandu-1 constituency is composed of wards 10, 11, 29 and 31 of Kathmandu Metropolitan City. And the incumbent lawmaker Singh is in a much more precarious position than Pokhrel for the upcoming elections. During his last electoral tussle, Singh kept his seat with an edge of 818 votes. The perpetrator of such damage to Singh’s electoral performance was Bibeksheel Sajha Party’s Rabindra Mishra.
While speaking with NepalMinute, Bam called his candidacy for the upcoming election another phase of his journey in service of ordinary people. An activist who was closely associated with the ‘Enough is Enough’ campaign, which sought to root out corruption in Nepal; his experience is working alongside Dr. Govinda K.C’s numerous mobilisations. Bam is confident that the people of Kathmandu-1 need an activist representing them, and their causes in the parliament.
Suman Sayami
Prior to contesting the 2022 Kathmandu mayoral race, Suman Sayami was an activist. Under the erstwhile government, authorities were widening the roads in 2015. They had begun to do so by destroying private properties, until the Supreme Court put a stop to it, declaring it illegal.
When an excavator came to dismantle his home at Kalimati, Sayami found himself at the frontlines of that struggle. His activism wasn’t born out of his eagerness to challenge the government on its policies, it was solely born out of circumstances.
In the 2022 local elections, Sayami was another independent candidate vying for the top office in Kathmandu metropolis. He finished fourth in the race, with 13,770 votes. Short of making history as the first independent candidate, he found his election hopes rising and announced his candidacy for the upcoming parliamentary elections.
Although he is yet to divulge all details, Sayami, a Kalimati resident, is likely to contest from Kathmandu-8, challenging the incumbent, and current Minister of Culture, Tourism and Aviation, Jeevan Ram Shrestha. Kathmandu-8 constituency is composed of wards 13, 15, 19, 20, 23 and 24 of Kathmandu Metropolitan City; and wards 4 and 5 of Nagarjun municipality.
Aakarshan Pokhrel
An engineer by profession, Aakarshan Pokhrel is another independent candidate joining the fray from Kathmandu-4. His main opponent in the upcoming election will be Gagan Thapa, the incumbent lawmaker, who in the recent convention of Nepali Congress was elected its General Secretary.
Gagan Thapa’s 2017 parliamentary election performance in the constituency was impacted by the concentration of communist votes in the constituency when CPN-UML and CPN-CM had merged to form Nepal Communist Party. Compared to his landslide victory with about 10,000 votes in the 2013 Constituent Assembly election, he held onto his seat with just about 3,000 votes in 2017.
Aakarshan will have to woo the voters of wards 1, 7, 8, and 30 of Kathmandu Metropolis; and also that of wards 1, 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 of Budhanilkantha municipality. Running with the slogan ‘Change is inevitable, waiting is not an option’, and having received endorsements from the likes of Nepali actor Aryan Sigdel; news of his announcement was picked up by several media platforms.
Hari Sharan Lamichanne
A veteran media personality, formerly affiliated to Radio Nepal, Hari Sharan Lamichanne will be standing in the upcoming election in a bid to represent the constituency of Kathmandu-3 as an independent candidate. He is also the elder brother of Rabi Lamichanne, the former host of the talk show, of the Sidha-Kura-Janta-Sanga.
The constituency of Kathmandu-3 had elected Krishna Bahadur Rai in the 2017 election. The constituency has had the representation of a CPN-UML candidate for the past two elections, with Nepali Congress being the runner up in both despite managing to secure over 10,000 votes.
The constituency of Kathmandu-3 encompasses all of Gokarneshwar municipality; wards 1, 2 and 3 of Kageshwari-Manohara municipality; and ward 6 of Kathmandu metropolis.
