Nagarik Unmukti Party elected Resham Chaudhary as the party's chairman from its first general convention held in Tikapur of Kailali district on Friday.

Chaudhary was elected unopposed to the post as no one filed a candidacy against him, said Ganesh Chaudhary, a leader of the party.

Resham, who was serving a life term after being convicted of masterminding the 2015 Tikapur massacre, founded the party while in prison before the 2022 November elections.

He was released from Dillibazar prison on May 28, 2023 after President Ramchandra Paudel, on the government’s recommendation, commuted his remaining jail term.

Chaudhary's election has raised a question of whether a murder convict can lead a political party.

The Nagarik Unmukti Party has four lawmakers in the House of Representatives and has won 12 seats in three provincial assemblies. The party, whose major support base is the country’s southern districts, has won seven seats in Sudurpaschim Province, four in Lumbini and one in Madhesh Province.

The party was registered at the Election Commission on January 3, 2022 by Chaudhary’s wife Ranjeeta Shrestha Chaudhary, who had thus far been acting as the party chair. She is now minister for land reform and management in the federal government.

The Act on Political Parties-2017 has defined who can become a member or office bearer of a political party. Section 13 (1)(a) states that only Nepali citizens not convicted in corruption; rape; human trafficking and smuggling; sales, or import or export of drugs; money laundering; kidnapping or any other criminal charges involving moral turpitude are eligible to be member of a political party.

Chaudhary, however, has been convicted by all three levels of courts as a mastermind of the Tikapur killings of 2015.

The President's pardon based on the government's recommendation was also widely criticised as the head of state endorsed the Cabinet's decision even before the Supreme Court had issued its full text of the verdict convicting Chaudhary.

Sharada Kadayat Bohara, wife of police inspector Keshav Bohara who was killed in the incident, moved the Supreme Court challenging the presidential pardon. The case filed in November last year is sub judice in the top court.

Constitutional lawyer Bipin Adhikari said Resham doesn't have a moral ground to lead a public organisation like a political party as all the three courts have said “he is a convict in cold-blooded murders.”

Adhikari argued that the President’s jail term pardon doesn't mean that Chaudhary has been given a clean chit on his crime. “The President's pardon was limited to allowing him to leave jail and live a free life. The pardon in no way erases his crime which has been established by the courts,” Adhikari told the Post. “In the eyes of the law, he is a murder convict.”

Besides that, the case filed by Sharada Kadayat Bohara against the President's pardon is still sub judice and the court may still invalidate the pardon, he said.

“The court has set a precedent when it ruled against murder convict Regal, in a case of similar nature,” he said.

The apex court in November last year annulled the decision to grant a presidential pardon to Yog Raj Dhakal, aka Regal, a murder convict. Dhakal, who was freed amid fanfare, was later jailed again as per the court order.

An Election Commission official says when a party changes its office bearers or policies, it has to send related documents and details to the commission. “We will check whether a particular person is eligible to be a member and an office bearer of the party when we get those documents,” Shaligram Sharma Paudel, spokesperson of the commission, told the Post. “We will validate their appointment if it is as per the law. Otherwise, we will not.”

Nagarik Unmukti Party leaders, however, argue that the endorsement of a candidate from the party’s general convention is a valid process.

“There could be no bigger endorsement of a political leader than his election as its chairperson through the respective party’s general convention,” Laxman Kishore Chaudhary, provincial assembly member of Sudurpaschim Province of the party, told the Post. “Debates on some legal matters may continue to take place.”