Ram Chandra Paudel (born 6 October 1944) is a Nepalese politician who has been the third and current president of Nepal since 2023. A former senior leader of the Nepali Congress, Paudel previously served as the speaker of the House of Representatives from 1994 to 1999, and was the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs from 1999 to 2002. First elected to parliament in 1991, he served in numerous other ministerial positions and was the Leader of the Opposition from 2011 to 2013, as the parliamentary party leader of the Nepali Congress.

Early life

Ram Chandra Paudel was born on 6 October 1944 in a Brahmin farming family in the remote village of Satiswara, located in the present-day Vyas municipality of Tanahun district. He completed his secondary education (SLC) from Nandi Ratri Secondary School in Kathmandu and studied Sanskrit literature at the Sanskrit University from 1963 to 1967. He also completed a MA in Nepali literature from the Tribhuvan University in 1970, appearing in his examinations while being detained in prison for anti-Panchayat activities.

Political career

Early years and student politics (1960s and 1970s)

Paudel got into politics aged just 16 when he joined the protests and movement against the dismissal of the B.P. Koirala-led government and imposition of Panchayat rule by King Mahendra in December 1960, and participated in numerous Congress-led armed struggles for the restoration of democracy in the 1960s. A key campaigner for the students’ movement in Nepal, he was elected president of the student union at the Saraswati Campus in 1967 and elected general secretary of the Democratic Socialist Youth League in 1968. Paudel took initiatives in organizing the Nepal Student Union, the Congress party’s student wing established in 1970, and was the union's founding central committee member.

Party politics (1970s – 2023)

Paudel entered into mainstream party politics in 1977, when he was elected member of the Nepali Congress Tanahun district committee. He was elected vice-president of the district committee in 1979, and president in 1980. Paudel was appointed coordinator of the Nepali Congress's Central Publicity Committee in 1983, and was appointed member of the party's central committee and chief of the party's central level publicity bureau in 1987. Paudel was first elected to parliament from Tanahun 1 in the 1991 general election, and served as the Minister for Local Development and Agriculture from May 1991 to 1994. In the 1994 general election, he switched seats and was elected from Tanahun 2, a seat he then held consecutively until 2017. Paudel was elected speaker of the House of Representatives following the election, and served until 1999. Following the 1999 general election, he was appointed deputy prime minister and Minister for Home Affairs, and he served in those positions until 2002. Paudel was elected general secretary of the Nepali Congress following the party's general convention in 2006. He played an important role in the peace process as the coordinator of the Peace Secretariat after the end of the civil war, and served as the Minister for Peace and Reconstruction from 2007 to 2008. Paudel was elected vice-president of the Nepali Congress in 2008, and defeated former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba to become Congress' parliamentary party leader following the 2008 Constituent Assembly election. Paudel contested the prime ministerial election in parliament in 2010, but was not elected even after 17 rounds of election. He served as the Congress party's acting president after the death of Sushil Koirala in 2016, but was defeated by Deuba in the party's 13th general convention later in the year. Having decided to switch back to his old seat of Tanahun 1, Paudel was defeated by Krishna Kumar Shrestha of the CPN (UML) in the 2017 general election. He remained active in party politics, and was elected from Tanahun 1 in the 2022 general election.

Detentions

Paudel spent over 15 years as a prisoner of conscience on various occasions, mostly for being an opponent of the panchayat system. He was detained on the following occasions:

President (2023 – present)

Paudel was the candidate from Nepali Congress and its 10-party alliance for the 2023 presidential election, and was elected president on 9 March 2023, defeating former speaker Subas Chandra Nemwang of the CPN (UML). He disassociated himself from all party responsibilities and resigned as an active member of the Nepali Congress after being elected president. Paudel resigned as member of Parliament before assuming office as president on 13 March 2023.

Personal life

Paudel is married to Savita Paudel and the couple have five children: four daughters and one son.

Publications

Paudel is an active writer and his political and theoretical affairs are frequently published in national vernaculars, including: Paudel received the Mahendra Bikram Shah Prize for an article titled "Human Rights Condition in Nepal" in 1987.

Honors