Nepali Congress stands today not merely at a crossroads, but at a moment of moral and political reckoning. As Nepal’s oldest political party, self-proclaimed as the most democratic and historically the most transformative, it once defined the nation’s democratic trajectory. From the restoration of democracy in 2007 BS, the referendum of 2036 BS, the reestablishment of multiparty politics in 2046 BS, and its central role in the republican transition of 2062/63, to the promulgation of the new Constitution in 2072 BS, Nepali Congress was a decisive force at every major historical juncture. Moreover, every significant political shift in Nepal has required the consent of Nepali Congress, even those that contradicted its original positioning, such as the Maoists' entry into mainstream, removal of the monarchy, formalization of federalism, and termination of Nepal's status as a Hindu state.
However, history becomes a burden when it is not renewed through action. Today, the same party that once led democratic revolutions and introduced transformative agendas is unable to conduct its regular general convention in time. This failure is not procedural alone. It reflects deep institutional decay, ideological drift, and organizational paralysis. What is unfolding instead is a game of one-upmanship with an uncertain winner but a very definite loser, and that will be Nepali Congress. The old guard is locked in a battle for mere personal political survival, while the new crusaders seek to reset the party’s long-delayed reform agenda.
Despite repeated shortcomings, the party has consistently been rewarded with public mandates. It enjoyed a two-thirds majority in 2015 BS, secured a clear majority in 2048 BS, and emerged as the largest party in the 2079 BS General Election. These were historic opportunities to institutionalize democracy, deepen social justice, and strengthen governance. Instead, they were consumed by factionalism, leadership insecurity, elite bargaining, and moral erosion. As national priorities were sidelined in favor of narrow partisan gain, silence within the party became complicity. The corrosion was gradual but now it’s more rapid, visible, and tangible.
This corrosion is evident not only in the party’s size, numbers and presence but across almost every dimension, including its ideology, internal democracy, service delivery, and political morality. Furthermore, the party is struggling to uphold democratic standards and, most crucially, to retain its most loyal constituencies.
Ideology in decline, values in retreat
The crisis of Nepali Congress is no longer merely organizational; it is equally ideological and moral. A party that adopted democratic socialism more than seven decades ago remains rigidly attached to it, despite the fact that the world has moved far ahead. In today’s global democratic political landscape, few countries or parties continue to advocate a state-controlled production sector as a governing principle. Ironically, it was a Nepali Congress led government in the early 1990s that initiated large scale privatization of state-run industries and embraced market liberalization. Yet, despite this clear policy shift in practice, the party has failed to update its ideological position, continuing to uphold democratic socialism in its official documents as its guiding philosophy. Only very recently, during the 2078 BS General Convention, did a faint but notable voice of Gagan Thapa emerge calling for a transition toward social democracy.
In addition, there are repeated compromises made in the name of electoral gain, power-sharing, and personal survival. From abandoning internal democratic norms to normalizing factional patronage, Nepali Congress has steadily replaced principle with pragmatism of the worst kind. Governments have been formed and dismantled not on policy disagreements or public mandate, but on shifting equations among party leaders seeking office, their protection, or leverage. What once stood for social justice, pluralism, and institutional integrity now struggles to distinguish itself from transactional politics. As a result, the party’s culture has drifted away from democratic deliberation toward closed-door bargaining, eroding credibility among voters who increasingly see no ideological differences between Nepali Congress and the very forces it once challenged, in particular Maoists and UML. Unless Nepali Congress confronts this history of compromise, renews its ideological clarity, and restores democratic discipline within, it risks becoming a party remembered more for its accommodations than for its convictions.
From revolutionary force to electoral machine
Nepali Congress was founded to dismantle a 104-year-old oligarchic system and establish citizen sovereignty. Today, it has reduced itself to an electoral apparatus whose primary objective is to contest elections and secure power. Ideology has thinned, political culture degraded, and moral authority weakened. If one looks at the names of leaders who have made it to the proportional list or been recommended by district committees to contest elections, there is no sense of freshness, nothing to excite voters, and most of the names are of those who have been in power for ages. They should be directly accountable for bringing the party to its current, despicable state. The party totally refuses to learn, change or adapt to the new realities.
Corporate drift of Nepali Congress
A political party in a democracy is a public platform, not a private corporate entity owned or controlled by a few individuals. Parties are meant to belong to their members, supporters, and ultimately to the citizens they claim to represent, serving as open spaces for ideas, participation, and collective decision making. However, Nepali Congress has increasingly behaved like a privately managed institution, where access to power, tickets, and influence is tightly controlled by a small circle at the top. Decisions are often taken behind closed doors, loyalty is rewarded over competence, and the wider membership is reduced to a mobilizing force during elections rather than a stakeholder in shaping the party’s direction. By failing to function as a genuinely public and participatory platform, Nepali Congress has weakened internal democracy, alienated committed cadres, and eroded public trust, turning a party with a proud democratic legacy into one that often mirrors the very exclusionary practices it once fought against.
Governing without a compass
Nepal remains dangerously fragile. Corruption is systemic, governance increasingly predatory, the judiciary compromised, and the legislature weakened by transactional politics. In such moments, the nation expects democratic forces to provide stability and reform.
Despite its long history and democratic legacy, Nepali Congress has largely failed to give the country a sense of stable and credible governance. When in power, the party has often appeared unsure of what it wants to achieve, allowing confusion, delays, and weak implementation. Decisions are frequently driven by internal power sharing and coalition management rather than by public interest, good policy, or long term planning. This has resulted in poor service delivery, ineffective control over the bureaucracy, and repeated corruption controversies that the party has neither addressed nor owned up to honestly. More than individual failures, the real problem lies in the absence of institutional reforms and political discipline that could strengthen governance beyond one government or one leader. By focusing more on staying in office than on governing well, Nepali Congress has missed the chance to produce efficient, transparent, and people oriented leadership, leaving citizens frustrated and increasingly disconnected from the party.
Leadership without renewal
One of the most damaging failures of Nepali Congress has been its inability, and at times unwillingness, to consciously develop and groom new democratic leadership. Over the years, the Nepali Congress has increasingly functioned like a fortified castle, sealed from within and hostile to those outside its inner walls. Leadership pathways are tightly controlled, allowing no meaningful lateral entry and offering little space for fresh talent, ideas, or independent voices. Advancement is determined less by competence, integrity, or public service and more by unwavering loyalty to top leaders, factional alignment, and personal proximity to power. In this closed system, organizational merit is routinely sacrificed, and only those armed with muscle, money, and entrenched relationships are able to climb the leadership ladder. Such an exclusionary culture has not only stifled internal renewal but has also alienated capable professionals, youth, and reform-minded cadres, gradually hollowing out the party’s credibility and capacity to govern. Nepali Congress has not only failed a generation of potential leaders but has also undermined the very democratic values it claims to uphold.
Ignoring grassroots, upsurge of the Maoists
Although the founder of Nepali Congress BP Koirala proclaimed that the party stood for the “last man of the nation,” from its very inception, it gradually became a party dominated by feudal interests, landlords, and elites, effectively abandoning the marginalized, oppressed, discriminated, and economically poor sections of society. As the party failed to translate power into reform, a political vacuum emerged at the grassroots. While citizens struggled even for the basic rights such as food, education, and healthcare, the party remained preoccupied with internal wrangling, leadership sabotage, horse-trading, and the normalization of corruption. This vacuum was swiftly filled by communist forces, particularly the UML and Maoists, who understood a fundamental truth the Nepali Congress ignored that politics is sustained not in Kathmandu’s corridors but in villages, communities, and lived realities. The erosion of the party’s grassroots base was not accidental. It was self-inflicted. The Nepali Congress conveniently detached itself from a once-loyal constituency.
Relegating Madhesh, rise of the regional parties
The party committed a historic political blunder by failing to address the legitimate aspirations of the Madheshi community. The Party bears a long record of marginalizing Madhesh, both within its internal party structure and through its conduct in government. While Madhesh has repeatedly delivered electoral support, Madheshi leaders were systematically kept away from the party’s real centers of power, with token representation substituting for genuine inclusion. Successive Congress-led governments failed to meaningfully address core Madheshi demands of citizenship rights, inclusion, and proportional representation in state institutions, federal restructuring, and recognition of Madheshi identity, often delaying, diluting, or outright sidelining these agendas. This persistent exclusion not only deepened political alienation in Madhesh but also exposed the party’s hill-centric orientation.
As a result, Madhesh erupted politically. Regional parties emerged and permanently fractured what was once a core support base of the Nepali Congress. More than 117 Madheshis lost their lives and thousands were injured in a struggle that ultimately forced federalism into the constitution. Yet the Nepali Congress could not claim moral ownership of this achievement. Federalism arrived despite the party, not because of it. A party that claimed to represent national unity failed to manage diversity losing its most loyal set of electorates.
Fallout with the middle class, birth of RSP
Perhaps the most consequential erosion for the Nepali Congress has occurred within the middle class. By 2079 BS, the party had fundamentally misread this constituency, which is educated, urban, digitally connected, and increasingly intolerant of corruption and incompetence. This group was once the ideological backbone of the Nepali Congress. It believed in liberal democracy, rule of law, and gradual reform. It tolerated imperfection as long as direction was clear. That tolerance has now been exhausted.
For years, the middle class observed the normalization of corruption scandals without accountability, the recycling of leadership without performance review, and the prioritization of coalition arithmetic over governance outcomes. The party spoke the language of democracy while practicing transactional politics. For educated and urban voters, this contradiction became impossible to defend.
That gave birth to Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP). RSP did not win this constituency through ideological sophistication. It captured it by articulating frustration with political entitlement and moral stagnation. RSP positioned itself as an anti-cartel force rather than a conventional party. Its appeal lay in direct communication, symbolic defiance, and rejection of arrogance. RSP is now the current flavor.
Digital uprising, disconnect with Gen-Z
The most dangerous failure of Nepali Congress lies in the party’s relationship with the youth. The Gen-Z protests of 2025 were not spontaneous eruptions. They were the culmination of long-suppressed frustration over unemployment, injustice, corruption, and the absence of dignity in public life.
Even afterward, Nepali Congress should have acted as a democratic bridge between the streets and the state. Instead, it chose silence, ambiguity, and tactical convenience. By emulating the dismissive posture of CPN (UML) particularly that of KP Oli, the party alienated an entire generation. Its indifference to the killing of innocent youths, public humiliation of its own five-time prime minister, and disregard for calls of course correction from its general secretaries has placed the party in a political no-man’s land.
The Gen-Z movement was not about age-specific demands. It signaled a fundamental shift in political consciousness. Ignoring it risks creating a permanent gap between the party and this critical electorate.
Ballot box blues, bleak future
As the March 5 election approaches, Nepali Congress heads into the contest weighed down by uncertainty rather than momentum. The party remains internally distracted by its unresolved crisis over holding a regular general convention versus a special convention, deepened factional mistrust, and projected image of a party that is more preoccupied with procedural survival than public purpose. This internal paralysis has weakened the party’s electoral posture at a moment when voters are demanding clarity and decisiveness. Meanwhile, whether one likes it or not, the growing convergence of Rabi Lamichhane’s populism, Balen Shah’s defiance, and Kulman Ghising’s credibility in delivery and governance has begun to capture the imagination of urban, educated, and middle-class voters who once formed a reliable Congress base. The March 5 election will be more than a contest for seats. It will be a referendum on credibility. Within this context, the positioning of Gagan Thapa and Bishwa Prakash Sharma carries critical weight; only if they are allowed to articulate a credible reformist agenda with autonomy and conviction. They can still lower the party’s rapid decline and retain pockets of trust. May be its already too late, maybe not.
Gagan and Bishwa: Between reform and revolt
Gagan Thapa and Bishwa Prakash Sharma now stand at a delicate intersection where impatience for change must be balanced with responsibility toward the party’s institutional survival. The challenge before them is not merely to oppose the existing leadership but to emerge as credible unifiers who can reform without fracturing Nepali Congress. At the same time, they cannot compromise on the agenda of making the party youth oriented, forward looking, and responsive to contemporary aspirations. They must move beyond episodic dissent and articulate a coherent political roadmap that connects internal reform with a broader national vision, one that speaks to young voters, the urban middle class, and the party’s shrinking traditional base alike including the Madheshis. Their biggest test will be resisting personality driven politics while patiently building a collective within the party that demands internal democracy, transparent decision making, and a credible succession process. If they are seen as impatient disruptors, they risk isolation; if they appear overly cautious, they risk irrelevance. Yet, if every institutional door to reform is deliberately closed and renewal from within becomes impossible, they must not hesitate to take a difficult and principled decision to start afresh and build a new, modern political force rooted in reform.
To sum up, in democracy, a political party’s role should go far beyond the simple ambition of winning elections, and this is where Nepali Congress, because of its long history and claimed democratic credentials, is expected to do much more. An ideal party must act as a living democratic institution that constantly engages with citizens, nurtures new leadership, encourages internal debate, and educates people about constitutional values, rights, and responsibilities even when it is not in power. It should invest time and energy in serious policy thinking grounded in Nepal’s social diversity, regional realities, and economic limitations, offering thoughtful alternatives. Most importantly, it must practice democracy within its own ranks through transparency, regular conventions, merit based leadership, and respect for dissent, because only then can it credibly defend democracy in the country. For Nepali Congress, whose identity is deeply tied to Nepal’s democratic struggle, reclaiming this broader and more responsible role is not just about party revival, but about safeguarding the future of Nepal.
Nepal doesn’t need a Congress sustained by nostalgia or fear of alternatives. It needs a party capable of radical self-correction, institutional reform, and moral clarity. March 5 will not end Nepali Congress, but it may decisively determine whether the party renews itself or slowly exits history.
In politics, imagination often precedes power. At present, that imagination no longer belongs to Nepali Congress.
(Mr Nishaant is the Founder of Nepal Democracy Foundation. He can be contacted by email at [email protected] or by phone at 977-9851026991.)
.
