13th March, 2018
Nepal’s parliament on Tuesday re-elected Bidhya Bhandari as the country’s president, three months after parliamentary polls were held.
Bhandari, the incumbent president for the last two and a half years, was backed by the ruling Unified Marxist-Leninist party, the largest in the parliament.
“Bhandari received the largest number of votes,” Navaraj Dhakal, a spokesman for the Election Commission, said.
According to the figures released by the Election Commission, her rival, Laxmi Rai, who was fielded by the opposition Nepali Congress, was defeated with a wide margin.
Lawmakers from the national parliament and provincial assemblies voted in the presidential election.
As a teenager, she joined a student wing of an underground communist party and married its charismatic leader Madan Bhandari, who died in a jeep crash in 1993.
Bhandari is a communist politician, and the second and current President of Nepal and commander in chief of Nepalese army elected in 2015.
She is the first woman to hold the office, born in June 19, 1961, in Mane Bhanjyang
The 56-year-old was a minister of defence for almost two years during her party’s previous administration.