The Nepali Congress was established on April 9, 1950, in Calcutta, India; the party’s core support came from democratic activists in exile from the repressive Rana oligarchic government that had ruled Nepal for 100 years.

In 1951, under pressure from a newly independent India and with NC cadres in the vanguard, the Rana regime fell. Though the NC formed the first elected government in 1959, internal struggles prevented effective governance. The party was outmaneuvered and again had to go underground in 1960 since King Mahendra established the so-called Panchayat dictatorship under his direct control. Congress activists gathered in India to re-ignite the democratic movement, through both peaceful and armed efforts. In January 1990, the NC joined by a coalition of seven communist parties, launched the nationwide People’s Movement, calling for the restoration of democracy. Following the success of this mass uprising, NC formed a majority government through its resounding success in the 1991 elections. Later, in the 1994 mid-term elections, the NC finished second behind the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML), which led a minority government for nine months. The NC then led two coalition governments before the 1999 elections when the NC regained a majority. In 2001, the NC split into the Nepali Congress, led by Girija Prasad Koirala, the brother of the NC’s first leader BP Koirala, and the Nepali Congress-Democratic (NC-D) led by Sher Bahadur Deuba; both had previously served as Prime Minister and the division reflected personal rather than ideological differences. Not surprisingly, the factions reunited in September 2007.

After King Gyanendra’s seizure of power in 2002, when he dismissed the elected government, the NC launched protests against the king’s ‘absolute rule’. Many party activists were arrested. In April 2006, the royalist government collapsed when thousands of people joined the second People’s Movement, three weeks of prolonged and unmanageable street protests jointly led by the Seven Party Alliance, and strongly backed by the CPN-Maoist.

The NC has been in government for more than 12 of the 17 years since 1991, including playing the leading role in the SPA government that oversaw the end of the Maoist civil war and the April 2008 CA elections. Throughout its history the party has been plagued with internecine conflicts. Focusing on its illustrious history and heroic former leaders, the NC has been reluctant to modernize and develop a forward-looking platform.

The founder of the Nepali Congress, BP Koirala, envisaged the NC functioning as a democratic socialist party. Nepali Congress is also a member of the Socialist International, a worldwide grouping of democratic socialist and social democratic parties, but in government has usually behaved as a party of the center-right, adopting neo-liberal economic prescriptions. Seen as the ‘establishment’ party, its decision to follow Maoist demands that Nepal be declared a federal republic alienated many supporters, and blurred the party’s message.

Girija Prasad Koirala serves as the President of the party and Sushil Koirala, Ram Chandra Poudyal, Gopal Man Shrestha, and Prakash Man Singh as Vice-Presidents, Bimlendra Nidhi, Ram Barav Yadav and K.B Gurung as General Secretaries and Arjun Narsingh K.C as its Spokesperson. There are a total of 72 Central Committee members including 36 invitees.

The NC manifesto proposes an indirectly elected President and directly elected Prime Minister as the executive head. The party is for autonomous federal states based on pluralism, national integrity, geography, population, natural resources, and economic viability; the number and size of the federal states would be decided by the Constituent Assembly on the basis of the recommendation for restructuring of the state commission that would be formed.

In the first parliamentary elections (1959), the NC won 74 out of 109 seats. Following the success of the uprising in 1991, NC won 112 out of 205 House of Representatives seats. In 1994 elections, the NC secured 83 out of 205 seats. In 1999 elections, NC again secured a majority winning 113 out of 205 seats. The party’s strength in these elections came from the people’s familiarity with the party and its liberal policies that made people feel comfortable.

The 2008 CA vote saw a dramatic drop in the NC’s influence, as it won only 110 out of the 601 seats in the Assembly. Unpopular candidates, failure to retain support in its traditional base in the southern region known as the Tarai, and disconnection from the grass-roots are cited as some of the many reasons behind the NC’s poor performance. Many members of the Koirala ‘dynasty’, including the party’s Acting President, Sushil Koirala, the Prime Minister’s daughter, Sujata Koirala, and his nephew, Shekhar Koirala, were routed in this crucial elections. The Prime Minister did not contest for a single member constituency; his name was included on the party’s PR list.