Former President Bidya Devi Bhandari has established her own contact office in Thapagaun, New Baneshwor, Kathmandu. The building was inaugurated in the name of the “Madan Bhandari 75th Birth Anniversary Main Management Committee,” with Bhandari herself cutting the ribbon.
After recently declaring her return to active party politics, Bhandari has initiated a separate mechanism under her patronage aimed at strengthening the CPN-UML organization and promoting the ideology of People’s Multiparty Democracy (Janatako Bahudaliya Janabad), championed by her late husband and former UML General Secretary Madan Bhandari.
Symbolically, she chose the same house in Thapagaun where Madan Bhandari had first set up his election campaign contact office in 1991. The four-storey red building, rented on Lakhechaur Road, will now function as the committee’s headquarters.
The Madan Bhandari Foundation—led by her daughter Usha Kiran Bhandari—has formed the main management committee for the diamond jubilee celebrations of Madan Bhandari’s birth anniversary, with former Bagmati Province Chief Minister Dormani Poudel as coordinator, a figure considered close to Bhandari.
Prime Minister and UML Chairperson KP Sharma Oli, however, has sharply criticized the foundation, calling it a “money-making vessel.” Just last month in Chyasal, while administering the oath to officials of the Madan-Aashrit Foundation, Oli remarked, “That institution has been made personal, as if it belongs to a family. Is it for husband and wife or for the movement? It has turned into a vessel for looting in the name of the party.”
Although Oli pushed through a Central Committee decision to block Bhandari’s membership renewal in UML, the former president has continued to push her political engagements through the foundation. Recently, she visited Biratnagar to meet UML leaders and cadres, though some Oli loyalists reportedly refused to meet her, citing instructions from above.
Thursday’s inauguration was attended by senior UML leaders, including Vice Chair Ishwar Pokhrel, Vice Chairs Yubaraj Gyawali and Surendra Pandey, Sarita Nyaupane, Baburam Gautam, Krishna Prasad Dahal, as well as Bagmati Province Chair Kailash Dhungel, Kathmandu District Chair Dipak Niraula, and former minister Mahendra Pandey, among others.
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