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Nepal gets its first female President- Bidhya Devi Bhandari

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Poorvi Gupta
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Nepal gets its first female President- Bidhya Devi Bhandari

Bidhya Devi Bhandari is chosen to be the first female president of Nepal. The lady has been fighting for women’s right for so long in Nepal and was an active campaigner of women’s right during the formulation of the new constitution.

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Bhandari, the communist leader of the Communist Party of Nepal Unified Marxist-Leninist (CPN–UML) got 327 votes in the parliament and her opponent got 214 votes today as declared by the Parliament Speaker Onsari Gharti.

“I announce that Bidhya Devi Bhandari has been elected to the post of Nepal's president,” said speaker Onsari Gharti Magar, to loud cheers from lawmakers, reported by News.

She has replaced Ram Baran Yadav, from the Nepali Congress, who was elected in 2008. Bidhya joined politics in her teens to break the on-going patriarchy in politics and later married Manohar Bhandari, a fellow communist.

However, Manohar died in a yet unexplained car accident and that’s when Bidhya came to the political scene whole-heartedly. She is claimed to be the second woman to be elect in the Nepal Parliament after the speaker of the Parliament Magar was chosen.

It was because of Bhandari that laws to call for active participation of women in the parliament were included. Now, the constitution says that one-third of the parliamentarians must be women and either the president or vice-president must be a woman too.

Just months back, Nepal was terribly hit by a massive earthquake. It is still on the recovering stage and will take a long time until the whole country is resurrected. Nonetheless, it didn’t come to a standstill as far as politics is concerned and right when the blow from earthquake was still happening; it went on to document its new constitution, elected new parliamentarians and effectively started work as it used to be.

Picture Credit- Kolly Talk

#EveryWomanIsALeader Bidhya Bhandari Nepal's first female president
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