Nepal’s First President: Dr. Ram Baran Yadav
Nepal, world’s youngest Republic, on Monday elected its first president, Dr. Ram Baran Yadav, of the Nepali Congress (NC). Yadav defeated his nearest rival from the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). The Constituent Assembly on May 20 abolished the 240-year-old Shah monarchy and decided Nepal would be a federal democratic republic.
A medical doctor by profession, Yadav spent more than two decades in hospitals in south Nepal’s Terai region before joining the movement for restoration of democracy in Nepal as a full-time politician in the 1990s. He is a widower with two sons and a daughter.
Although a Madhesi, he stood firm against the demands of a single autonomous Madhesh state, claimed by some Madhesh-based political parties and played an important role to calm down the agitation that broke out in the southern plains of the country last year.
“He said he would never support the politics of ethnicity. ‘It is nonsense to have a single Madhesh (state) because different colors of people live there. The Madhesi people want their right, not a separate territory,’ he said.
“The 64-year-old president was born into a middle class farmer family in the southern plains of Terai, Sapahi village of Dhanusa district, some 125 km south of the Nepali capital of Kathmandu. Yadav was elected to the legislature in 1999, and once served as the state minister, and minister for health in the cabinet in the 1990s led by the Nepali Congress.” More here…
Nepal, as big as Iowa state in the US, is sandwiched between India and China and home to world famous Mt Everest. It is one of the most poor countries in the world. More here…
