Bidhya Devi Bhandar

Bidhya Devi Bhandari is a Nepalese politician who is the current President of Nepal and commander in chief of Nepalese Army. She is the first woman to hold the office.
Born: June 19, 1961 (age 57 years), Manebhanjyang
Party: Nepal Communist Party
Spouse: Madan Bhandari (M. 1982–1993)
Siblings: Gyanendra Bahadur Karki, Sushila Pandey, Kalpana Bhandari, Degendra Pandey, Kabita Pandey
Parents: Mithila Pandey, Ram Bahadur Pandey
Children: Usha Kiran Bhandari, Nisha Kusum Bhandari

Nepal’s newly elected President Bidya Devi Bhandari was born in Guranse village of Bhojpur district on June 19, 1961.

In the late 1970s, she began her political career as a member of a socialist student organization. She became a member of the then CPN-ML in 1980-81, around two years before marrying Madan Kumar Bhandari, a well-known Communist politician.

Madan Kumar, who was later elected General Secretary of the then CPN-ML and also of the unified CPN-UML, propounded Janatako Bahudaliya Janawad (People’s Multiparty Democracy), the guiding principle of today’s UML.

The leader is also attributed for popularising Nepal’s Communist movement to a new height.

But, the most popular Communist leader of the nation during the time died in a jeep accident in Dasdhunga of Chitwan on 16 May, 1993.  After the yet-to-be-solved mysterious accident, which many people still believe was a murder, the seat of Member of Parliament from Kathmandu-1 was vacant.

Bhandari contested in the by-election to fill the vacancy and she won the race, defeating the former Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai of Nepali Congress.

She served as a Member of the Parliament for a year.

Bhandari also won two subsequent parliamentary elections from Kathmandu-2 in 1994 and 1999.

In the 1994 elections, she had defeated Nepali Congress candidate Daman Nath Dhungana. Dhungana was speaker of the House of Representatives before the elections.

She was a member of the Interim Parliament formed after the 2006 Janaandolan II.

The UML leader was the Minister for Defence in the Madhav Kumar Nepal-led government from May 25, 2009 until February 6, 2011. Earlier in 1990s, she was once appointed the Minister for Environment and Population.

She has been leading the party’s sister organisation, All Nepal Women Association, for nearly two decades.

From the party's eighth and ninth conventions in February 2009 and July 2014, she was elected Vice-Chairperson. She was a Central Committee member of the party since its sixth national convention in January 1998.

In 2008, Bhandari was defeated by Nepali Congress candidate Suprabha Ghimire in the inaugural Constituent Assembly elections from Kathmandu-4. In the second CA elections, conducted in November 2013, she was elected to the Constitution-writing body using the Proportional Representation (PR) method.

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