Madhesh-based parties, despite frequent splits and reunifications, maintained a noticeable presence in national politics and in Parliament for much of the past two decades. However, the recently held parliamentary elections have wiped them off the electoral map.

Of the 275 seats in the House of Representatives, 32 come from the eight districts of Madhesh Province under direct election. Yet, in the latest election the Madhesh-based parties won none of the seats in their traditional stronghold.

Madhesh-based political analyst Tula Narayan Shah outlines some basic factors for the wipeout of the regional parties in this election. Nepali politics championed the agenda of democracy from 1990 to 2006, whereas identity politics dominated the agenda from 2008 until 2015.

After the promulgation of the constitution in 2015, good governance and service delivery were the dominant factors of politics, where Madheshi parties failed to perform despite being in the government multiple times, says Shah.

“Madheshi parties that excelled in democratic and identity politics failed in good governance and service delivery,” said Shah, explaining why they could not do well this time.

However, Amresh Kumar Singh, who won the March 5 vote for the Rastriya Swatantra Party in Sarlahi-4, says that the defeat of Madheshi parties in Madhesh was due to their failure to meet the Madheshi people’s demand for justice and development.

Singh called Madheshi parties the “trendsetters of nepotism” in Nepali politics. Most senior leaders of such parties practised cronyism in politics, where family members were appointed proportional representation members. Madheshi people had long noticed this tendency, he shared.

“Their debacle is the result of multiple failures to honour the public aspirations,” said Singh.

Gajendra Narayan Singh is widely regarded as the pioneer of Madhesh-centric or regional politics in Nepal. Singh, who established the Nepal Sadbhawana Party, first represented Madhesh in the Rastriya Panchayat in 1986.

Upendra Yadav emerged as the biggest face of Madhesh-based politics after 2008, while CK Raut, the chair of Janamat Party, tried to emerge as the ‘messiah’ of Madhesh.

However, when the Rastriya Swantantra Party (RSP) secured 30 of the seats from the province, the remaining two were won by candidates from the Nepali Congress and the Nepali Communist Party. There were zero seats for the Madheshi parties.

Before the people’s movement of 2006, the Sadbhawana Party solely upheld the Madheshi identity in Parliament with a few members.

Madheshi Janadhakar Forum Nepal, which emerged from the first Madhesh movement following the promulgation of the interim constitution in 2007, had 52 seats in the 601-strong first constituent assembly. Similarly, the Tarai Madhesh Loktantrik Party and the Sadbhawana Party each secured 20 and 9 seats.

Even in the second constituent assembly, the Madheshi forces had respectable representation, though not as strong as in the first. But they boosted their presence in the 2017 parliamentary election, held after the promulgation of the new constitution in 2015. Although only two Madheshi parties were in the electoral fray, they together won 33 seats in the 275-member-strong lower house.

Madheshi parties had long faced accusations of pursuing power politics while using the people’s agenda only as a ladder to government posts. Similar criticism had surfaced even after previous elections. For this reason, many believed that the rise of the Janamat Party led by CK Raut in the 2022 election reflected a public desire to challenge the established Madheshi parties.

The election of 2022 saw three major Madheshi parties in the federal parliament, with the Janata Samajbadi Party, led by Upendra Yadav (which later split), commanding 12 seats; the new Janamat Party of Raut getting six; while four went to the Loktantrik Samajbadi Party of Mahantha Thakur.

However, in this election, not only older Madheshi parties but also Raut’s Janamat Party failed to win a single seat. Leaders who built their political careers championing the Madhesh agenda have been defeated in their traditional bastion.

Janamat chair Raut believes that it was the Balendra (Balen) Shah craze that edged out not only the Madheshi parties but also other national parties in this election. Prior to joining the RSP for the elections, Shah resigned from his position as the mayor of Kathmandu Metropolitan City. He went to polls as the party’s prime ministerial candidate.

Raut argued that it was Shah’s digital craze that helped his party achieve unprecedented results, winning a near two-thirds majority in the House. Up until now, no Madheshi party had got a big enough public mandate to work for good governance and service delivery, Raut says.

“Our presence has been nullified in parliament due to the craze for Balen, not because we could not work for good governance and service delivery,” he says.

While Singh, the RSP lawmaker, believes there is no room for the revival of Madhesh-based politics, Raut argues that Madheshi parties will not lose their sway just because of the poor performance in one election. He is optimistic that Madheshi or regional politics will revive.

Despite the poor performance in this election, analyst Shah believes that Madheshi parties will not lose all their ground in Madhesh. Shah also says that as the problem of marginalisation has not been addressed, the issue will resurface in the days to come.

Referring to the achievement of Harka Sampang’s Shram Sanskriti Party, Shah says, “Sampang’s performance as the mayor of Dharan sub-metropolitan city might have played a part in this, as did his identification with members of certain ethnic communities.” So it would be wrong to infer that identity politics is now dead, says Shah.