The hard road to Nepali Congress reform

Perhaps it’s not a bad idea for Congress leaders who resist change to go their own separate way.

In just three and a half years, the Nepali Congress went down from 89 seats in the federal lower house in 2022 to 38 in 2026. If the faction of Purna Bahadur Khadka, former party president Sher Bahadur Deuba’s hand-picked vice-president, is to be believed, the one and only person responsible for this downfall of the party is Gagan Thapa. Supposedly, in the aftermath of the 2025 Gen Z movement, had Thapa not revolted and had he not convened a special general convention, the party would be in a much better shape right now. The special convention, called just a couple of months before the March 5 national elections, had picked Thapa as the new Congress president. Khadka’s faction protested, yet both the Election Commission and later the Supreme Court legitimised the gathering as well as Thapa’s status as the new party president. Following this, the Congress party went to election under Thapa. As the leader of the party’s electoral machine, Thapa no doubt has to shoulder the blame for the historic drubbing the Congress suffered. He had, after all, taken the risk of convening the convention before parliamentary polls that were only months away. Yet the contention of Khadka and his faction that the party would otherwise have fared better at the polls is dubious.