After a decade-long hiatus, the Nepal Student Union is set to hold its 11th general convention in the Capital from Sunday.

Over 3,300 representatives—more than half of them have already reached Kathmandu—will attend the three-day jamboree of the Nepali Congress’ student wing at Bhrikutimandap, confirmed NSU Spokesperson UP Lamichhane.

This is the first NSU convention since the unification of the NC faction led by Sher Bahadur Deuba with the mother party in 2007. Despite announcing polls on seven different occasions, the biennial event has been held off due to deep factionalism, high number of aspirants and tradition of nominating the president from “leadership’s pocket”.

After being elected to the NC top post in March, Deuba had urged all of sister organisations of the party to hold their general conventions within the next six months. To that effect, the party formed a five-member panel under central committee member Prakash Sharan Mahat to ensure the convention is held within the stipulated time.

Student leaders said all preparations for the convention were in the final stages. “Hotels, venue, food and lodging; everything has been arranged. No one should be sceptical about the polls now,” said the NSU spokesperson.

Though the union has completed district conventions in 64 of the 75 districts, student leaders say the remaining disputed districts will also have representatives through consensus. “We are confident that the 11 districts will also send names in consensus so that we will have representatives from all 75 districts,” said NSU central committee member Moti Lal Bhandari. The convention is estimated to cost around Rs2 million which will be funded by the mother party, leaders said.

According to the new NSU statute, it will have one chairperson and 13 vice-chairpersons—one each from seven provincial states, four from inclusive quota and two nominations—and three general secretaries, two elected and one nominated.

Meanwhile, the committee has set an age bar of 32 years to participate in the NSU general conventions. However, the directive will only come into effect in the 12th general convention. The central committee will be dissolved automatically if it fails to hold the next convention in the next two years, according to the committee.

Even though individual aspirants have already announced their candidacy to lead the union, official panel candidates would only be announced after the convention begins, said Lamichhane.

Kshitiz Bhandari, Manoj Acharya, Nain Singh Mahar, Jit Jung Basnet, Shuvaram Basnet, Kundan Kafle and Deepak Bhattari, among others, have announced their candidacy for presidency.