Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa Badal reached Hetauda by helicopter on Friday and registered his candidature. He has reached Hetauda by helicopter on Friday.
He arrived in Baluwatar on Friday shortly after a meeting of top leaders and a meeting with the President and senior UML leaders till midnight on Thursday. Home Minister Thapa said that his victory was assured as soon as he filed his candidature for the by-election of Bagmati Pradesh on May 20. He said that his party had secured 5,130 votes out of 9,564 in Bagmati.
Thapa’s main rival Khim Lal Devkota is also a UML leader. But now he has been made an independent candidate in an alliance of the UCPN (Maoist) Center, Nepali Congress, JSP’s Rupendra Yadav and Baburam Bhattarai, UML’s Madhav faction. Both the parties have started counting the votes after the UML clashed in the election. The state assembly and local level chiefs and deputy chiefs will cast their votes in the election. In Bagmati, where the UML has a single majority, the Madhav faction has fielded a separate candidate in alliance with the opposition, which has become a headache for Thapa.
In Bagmati, where the UML has 5,130 votes, there are only 4,452 votes in the opposition. Even within the UML, there are 1,740 votes in favor of Madhav Nepal. That is enough to defeat Thapa.
UML has 133 out of 238 local level deputy chiefs while Madhav has 38 in favor of Nepal. Similarly, out of 110 state members, 57 are from UML and 22 are from Madhav. That is why Devkota has become a strong candidate. Devkota has also claimed that his victory is assured. Apart from Thapa and Devkota, Krishna Bahadur Tamang of NCP has also given his candidature in the election.
