Nepali Congress general secretaries Gagan Kumar Thapa and Bishwa Prakash Sharma were designated the election ‘commanders’ for two of the three constituencies where by-elections for the House of Representatives seats were held last year.

The Congress party also entrusted the general secretaries with leading the campaign for the by-election held for a federal seat in Ilam on Saturday. Sharma was even named the party’s election commander for Ilam-2. However, the party couldn’t do well as CPN-UML’s Suhang Nembang won the seat defeating the Congress candidate with a margin of 5,830 votes.

In the by-election held last year, Thapa was appointed the election commander of Tanahu-1 and Sharma of Chitwan-2.

Especially after the party's defeat in the Ilam by-election, political observers have questioned the general secretaries’ views. It appears that the general secretaries believe no other Congress leader represents the party as well as they do. If it was the duo’s recommendation that kept the party president from campaigning in Ilam, then their political calculations are wrong, analysts say.

The general secretaries are in trouble if they think they are the only face of change in the Congress, Pitambar Bhandari, a political analyst, told the Post. “They need to learn from Ilam’s case that the party organisation matters more than the leaders’ personality.”

Last year, Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) President Rabi Lamichhane was elected in the bypoll in Chitwan-2, the constituency he also won in November 2022 House of Representatives election. He lost the lawmaker position when the Supreme Court invalidated the citizenship certificate that he had surrendered as a US citizen.

Later, after reacquiring citizenship certificate, Lamichhane contested the election and defeated his competitor, Congress leader Jeet Narayan Shrestha, by a huge margin.

Wagle, who quit the Congress to join the RSP just ahead of the election, won from Tanahun-1, defeating Govinda Bhattarai of the Congress. The constituency had been vacant after Ramchandra Paudel got elected the country’s President. The new party, RSP, snatched away Tanahu-1, traditionally a Congress stronghold.

Thapa and Sharma were elected the general secretaries from the 14th general convention held in 2021. Their victory was hailed as a generational shift in the party’s leadership. However, the two leaders have neither been able to stop party president Sher Bahadur Deuba from taking decisions against their wish nor have they prevailed in mobilising the party to secure any transformative results.

Though Thapa and Sharma were firm about fielding Bhesh Raj Acharya for the Ilam-2 by-election, Congress chief Deuba handed the ticket to Dambar Bahadur Khadka. Khadka had lost the election from the same constituency in 2022, by 114 votes, to UML leader Subas Nembang, who died last year. This time around, despite efforts from the party general secretary and election commander, Khadka did not win.

While Suhang, the late Nembang’s son, secured 27,772 votes, Khakda of the Congress trailed with 21,942.

However, Sharma claims that his only purpose in Ilam was to support the party’s election campaign.

“The election result mostly depends on local factors and, the central leader’s visit to the constituency for campaigning has only a little impact on whether the party wins or loses,” Sharma told the Post.

For the Congress general secretary, the recently concluded bypoll was important for another reason too. During the Mahasamiti meeting of the party held on February 19-22, General Secretary Thapa proposed the party contest the election without an alliance, which was accepted in principle by the conclave after thorough discussion. In 2022, the Congress formed a coalition for local elections and joined a pre-poll alliance for federal and provincial elections.

In keeping with the decision of the Mahasamiti meeting, the Congress did not form any alliance in the recently concluded by-elections. But the party then faced a setback. When Congress had lost the previous election in Ilam-2 by a slim margin of 114 votes, the difference this time between the UML and Congress candidates widened to 5,830 votes.

Not only in Ilam-2, the Congress also lost the bypoll in Bajhang (A) constituency of the Sudurpaschim provincial assembly to a UML candidate, a seat they had won during the provincial election of 2022.

When Daman Bahadur Bhandari, the winning candidate of the UML in Bajhang, secured 11,613 votes, Abishek Singh of the Congress managed to gain 11,346 votes. The provincial assembly seat which Congress earlier won with the alliance’s support was lost when it contested the seat alone this time.

The performance of the Congress in the bypoll challenged general secretary Thapa’s resolve not to ally before the election, experts say.

“The moral ground of the Thapa-led faction that advocates for contesting election alone might be high after the bypoll result as the Congress, it argues, was able to get as many votes this time as it got under the proportional representation (PR) category in the constituency in the last election,” said Bhandari, the political analyst. “But the establishment faction, which has a clear majority in the party, may argue that winning is all that matters and on that count, the party failed in Ilam.”

The Congress had secured 22,333 votes under the PR category in the constituency in the 2022 elections. Its candidate from the constituency got 21,942 votes this time.