Former President Bhandari Returns to UML, Sworn In as Party's No. 2

Bidya Devi Bhandari, Nepal's former President, took an oath on Thursday, October 8, as the second ranking leader of the CPN-UML, a communist party that was the second largest in Nepal's last parliament. Party chair and former prime minister KP Sharma Oli administered the oath at a Standing Committee meeting, the Kathmandu Post reported. She was seated to Oli's right. Vice chair Ram Bahadur Thapa sat on his left.

There is a catch the ceremony did not show. The "senior leader" post Bhandari now holds does not exist in the UML's own statute, the Kathmandu Post and myRepublica both reported. The party created it last month by invoking a statute rule for removing obstacles, the Kathmandu Post reported. UML leader Binda Pandey said the September decision rested on the party chair's authority rather than its rules and gave the post no voting rights, ua.news reported, citing the Kathmandu Post.

Bhandari served two terms as President, from October 2015 to March 2018 and March 2018 to March 2023. Before that she was a UML vice chair. She later stayed active through the Madan Bhandari Foundation, set up in memory of her late husband, the Kathmandu Post reported. Thursday's oath came 11 years after she first left party responsibility for the presidency, the Kathmandu Post reported.

The timing matters for a party in trouble. UML won just 25 seats in the House of Representatives in the March 5 election, seven by direct vote and 18 by proportional representation, down from 78 seats it held in the last Parliament, the Kathmandu Post reported. Oli faces pressure from vice chair Bishnu Paudel and general secretary Shankar Pokharel, who has pushed a restructuring report. At the oath ceremony, Pokharel sat behind two vice chairs rather than beside Oli, a seating change the Post noted. An unnamed UML leader told the paper Oli may be using Bhandari's return to send Paudel and Pokharel a message.

Bhandari, speaking in Butwal on September 29, said she returned "to take responsibility again to build the party and the country" and has "no desire for any position or personal interest," according to the Kathmandu Post. She has argued that the constitution protects her right to take part in politics and that no law or party rule bars her return, the Kathmandu Post reported. Hari Sharma, a political scientist and former adviser to President Ram Baran Yadav, called her return a "moral question" given the presidency's role above party politics. Constitutional expert Bipin Adhikari said a former president holds information on security and administration that makes a return to partisan ranks hard to reconcile with the office's dignity. Pandey, the UML leader, questioned whether the party was focused on positions instead of issues.

A reversal, and a record

The reversal runs deeper than this week's ceremony. On July 22, 2025, the UML Central Committee decided not to renew Bhandari's party membership, myRepublica reported. The party argued that the constitution did not envisage a former president returning to a party, the Kathmandu Post reported. On May 18 this year Oli agreed to give her membership back, myRepublica reported.

Analysts fear her return will pull decisions from her presidency into party fights, the Kathmandu Post reported. Two of those decisions involved Oli. As President, she endorsed Oli's recommendation to dissolve the House of Representatives on December 20, 2020, a move the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional on February 23, 2021, according to a 2023 Kathmandu Post review of her tenure. Oli dissolved the House again months later, and Bhandari endorsed it quickly after midnight on May 21, 2021, the same report said.

What we still do not know

The Kathmandu Post reported that the senior leader post is expected to go before the next statute convention. Whether that convention keeps it is not known. Whether Paudel, Pokharel or Ishwar Pokharel, whom Bhandari backed against Oli at the 11th General Convention, according to myRepublica, have responded on record to Bhandari's rise is not yet known.