After more than three decades of contesting parliamentary elections—winning some and losing others—veteran Madheshi leader Mahantha Thakur is now charting a new course towards the National Assembly.

Thakur, 82, has been fielded as a candidate from Madhesh Province under an electoral alliance of the Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and the Madhesh-based parties–the Loktantrik Samajbadi Party Nepal (LSP-N) and the Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal (JSP-N).

The nomination process has taken place while the two Madhesh-based parties themselves are in the unification process.

Thakur, who entered politics as a student, had told voters during the 2022 general election in Mahottari–3 that it would be his “last” parliamentary race. Having secured that seat, he is now transitioning away from the House of Representatives to begin what appears to be a near-assured journey to the upper house.

With support from Congress and UML in the province, Thakur’s election to the National Assembly looks all but certain.

Four seats are up for election in Madhesh Province. Thakur is contesting as a candidate from the JSP-N and LSP-N; Ranjit Karna and Dharmendra Paswan from Congress; and Rekha Jha from the UML. These three forces have reached an electoral understanding.

On December 28, leaders from the JSP-N led by Upendra Yadav, and the LSP-N, led by Mahantha Thakur, announced a unity agreement. However, they have still not yet finalised the names, leadership, and election symbol of the to-be-formed unified party.

The Nepali Communist Party, meanwhile, has announced its own slate of four candidates—Ram Nandan Prasad, Laxman Paudel, Shambhu Paswan and Samikumari Agrawal from the province.

Thakur’s political journey spans multiple turning points. He won from Sarlahi–5 in the 1991 parliamentary election as a Congress candidate and later served as Deputy Speaker in the lower house. He retained the seat in the 1994 mid-term polls and went on to hold ministerial portfolios in agriculture, law, science and technology. In 2008, while serving as treasurer of the Nepali Congress, he abruptly quit the party to form the Tarai–Madhesh Loktantrik Party (TMLP).

He lost the 2008 Constituent Assembly race from Sarlahi–4—a Congress stronghold, to the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum’s Shivpujan Yadav, and was defeated again in 2013 by Congress candidate Amaresh Kumar Singh. He later shifted his political base to Mahottari, where he won in 2022.

Thakur’s career has seen its share of highs and lows, yet he has regularly retained space in national politics. Many within Congress still remark, “Had he not left the party, Thakur would have been the first president of the country.”

Ram Baran Yadav of Nepali Congress, who was junior to him in party politics, became the first President of the country in 2008. Yadav completed his tenure as head of the state after promulgating the present constitution from the Constituent Assembly in 2015.