President Ram Chandra Paudel shares a unique coincidence with Tanahun-1.
This is the constituency where he made his parliamentary debut. It is also the constituency where he lost parliamentary election for the first time. And, it is the same constituency where he competed in his final parliamentary election.
Elected from Tanahun-1 on a Nepali Congress (NC) in 1991, Paudel moved to Tanaun-2 from 1994 onward. He continued to win there without much difficulty. Following the promulgation of the new Constitution in 2015, the three constituencies of Tanahun were merged into two. The current Tanahun-1 was formed by combining the erstwhile Tanahun-1 and half of Tanahun-2 where Paudel had been winning.
Tanahun-1 put gave Paudel, who had been winning elections continuously since 1991, the taste of defeat for the first time in 2017. He was defeated by the left alliance including CPN-UML and the then CPN (Maoist Center). Paudel again contested from the same constituency in five years later in what was his final parliamentary election. He won securing 25,000 votes and became the country's president a few months later.
Swarnim Wagle of the newly formed RSP won the by-election in Tanahun-1 after Paudel became president. Wagle secured 34,911 votes, while his closest rival NC’s Govinda Bhattarai of received 20,122 votes. Sarbendra Khanal of UML was third with 8,488 votes.
Now, let’s look at where the nearly 35,000 votes Wagle received came from. The 20,000 votes Bhattarai received in the by-election is equal to the proportional representation (PR) votes NC received in 2022. Paudel had received just 5,000 more votes owing to NC’s alliance with Maoist Center. This means Wagle was not able to win much of NC votes.
Looking at UML's position, Ek Bahadur Rana from the party had received 19,925 votes in 2022 while its PR vote was 16,500. However, in the by-election, Khanal secured only 8,500 votes. This means about 11,500 votes that UML received in the previous election went to Wagle.
Former NC leader Govinda Raj Joshi had also contested in 2022 and secured 6,886 votes. Since he supported RSP in the by-election, his share of votes appears to have gone to Wagle. In the by-election, there was also an alliance between the NC, Maoist Center, and CPN (Unified Socialist) formed after splitting from UML. Bhattarai was the candidate of that alliance. However, he did not receive much support from other parties in the alliance. Local leaders estimate that 5,000 to 7,000 votes from the Maoists and Unified Socialist went to Wagle.
Apart from that, the 6,500 votes received by the RSP candidate in 2022 also naturally went to Wagle. Not only this, the swing votes that change parties from time to time also went to Wagle.
Wagle and Bhattarai are again clashing in the election scheduled for March 5. RSP Vice-President Wagle has been projected as the future finance minister by the party. UML, meanwhile, has fielded Bhagwati Neupane whose term as National Assembly member was expiring in March.
Neupane, who lost the mayoral race for Bhanu Municipality in the 2017 local election, was elected to the National Assembly in 2020 on ticket of the then CPN formed after unification of UML and Maoist Center.
Neupane, who became UML parliamentary party leader in the National Assembly, was appointed minister for federal affairs and general administration by Chairman KP Sharma Oli. Born and raised in this constituency, her biggest challenge is to retain old UML voters and attract new ones. She also faces the challenge of saving the UML's prestige in this constituency after suffering consecutive defeats in 2022 and the by-election.
Similarly, Deepak Raj Joshi, son of Govinda Raj Joshi, has also filed independent candidacy this time.
Many are interested to see whether RSP can repeat its previous victory. Wagle’s biggest challenge is to retain the traditional UML and Maoist votes he pulled toward himself during the by-election. If he can pull UML and Maoist votes like before and attract new voters, he can again emerge victorious. Local leaders assess that Wagle could benefit from the disappointment among UML voters following the Gen-Z movement. Moreover, Wagle's popularity has not diminished as he regularly visits the constituency. The party declaring him as the future finance minister may also benefit him.
On the other hand, even when a massive wave in favor of RSP emerged during the by-election, NC did not lose its traditional votes. Therefore, Bhattarai can give Wagle a tough competition this time as well. Having been involved in the construction of more than 60 drinking water projects and numerous social and developmental works in the district, Bhattarai is a popular leader at the local level.
In this second attempt if he can retain NC votes as before and pull even a small number of UML, Maoist, and new voters toward him, he can restore the lost legacy of NC in Tanahun-1.
Besides this, about 6,000 votes of Govinda Raj Joshi went to RSP last time. A portion of that may go to his son Deepak Raj this time. Local leaders say both Wagle and Bhattarai are trying to pull as much of this vote as possible.
