Baburam Bhattarai

Prime Minister of Nepal

18 June 1954 Khoplang, Gorkha, Nepal

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29 August 2011 – 14 March 2013

Nepalese politician Baburam Bhattarai (Nepali: बाबुराम भट्टराई , pronounced  ; born 18 June 1954) is a Nepalese politician and federal Chairman of Janta Samajbadi party who was Prime Minister of Nepal from August 2011 to March 2013. He was a long-time leading member of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) prior to founding a new party, Naya Shakti. In 1996 the Maoists started the Nepalese Civil War, which had a huge impact on the political system in Nepal. The decade-long civil war, in which more than 12,000 Nepalese died, had a major role in the transformation of Nepal from a monarchy into a republic. Bhattarai was elected to the Constituent Assembly from Gorkha as a Maoist candidate in 2008 and became Minister of Finance in the cabinet formed after the election. Bhattarai became Prime Minister in 2011. As a way out of the political deadlock since the dissolution of the first Nepalese Constituent Assembly in May 2012, he was replaced by Chief Justice Khil Raj Regmi as head of an interim government that was to hold elections by 21 June 2013. He was a senior Standing Committee member and vice chairperson of the Maoist party until his resignation from his post and all party responsibilities on 26 September 2015. He was until recently the Coordinator of the Naya Shakti. As of 2019, he is the Chairman of the Federal Council of the newly formed Samajbadi Party, Nepal, a party formed by the merger of the Naya Shakti Party, Nepal and the Federal Socialist Forum, Nepal.