Kathmandu, March 8 – Nepali Congress President Gagan Thapa suffered a significant defeat at the hands of Amaresh Kumar Singh of the ruling Rastriya Swatantra Party in this year's parliamentary elections.
Thapa, the party's candidate for prime minister, secured 22,831 votes in the election held in Sarlahi-4 in the Madhesh Province, against 35,688 votes cast for Singh, adding to the growing list of prominent leaders who have experienced a similar outcome.
Elected as the party's president just in January this year through a controversially held Special General Convention, Thapa was not only expected to win but also to lead the party to better electoral prospects.
However, traditional political parties, including the Nepali Congress, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) or CPN (UML), and the Nepali Communist Party, are all facing challenges from the relatively new political force that has already secured over a century of seats out of 165 under the First-Past-the-Post system while still leading in the majority of seats.
Thapa had announced his candidacy from Sarlahi-4, a traditional stronghold of the ruling party, after giving up his long-time constituency of Kathmandu-4, but suffered defeat at the hands of a former lawmaker from his own political party.
For a long period, Amaresh Kumar Singh served in the Nepali Congress after being appointed a member of parliament in the reinstated House of Representatives in 2006 by then Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala following the 2006 People's Movement that ended the rule of then King Gyanendra Shah.
He won the Constituent Assembly elections in 2013 from Sarlahi-6 and participated in the constitution-making process. He later contested the parliamentary elections in 2017 from Sarlahi-4, representing the Nepali Congress, and won.
He was also elected to the lower house in 2022 as an independent candidate after the Nepali Congress refused to give him a ticket.
Just before the 2026 elections, Singh joined the Rastriya Swatantra Party and won the election from Sarlahi-4 by defeating his one-time leader, Thapa.
Singh holds a PhD in international relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University.