Rastriya Swatantra Party Achieves Historic Victory in Kaski-2, Shattering CPN-UML's Stronghold

Pokhara. The Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) has achieved a historic success in Kaski Constituency No. 2, which was considered an impregnable fortress of the CPN-UML. The RSP candidate, Uttam Prasad Paudel, demolished this UML legacy, which no one could break even during the 'Prachanda wave' of 2064 BS, by a massive margin of votes.

According to the recently published final vote count, Paudel won by securing 31,911 votes. His closest competitor, Rashmi Acharya of CPN-UML, received only 7,493 votes. This result has stunned the UML in its own stronghold. The margin between the victorious Paudel and Acharya is 24,418 votes, which is considered very large in Kaski's electoral history.

In this constituency, Madhav Prasad Bastola (Madhu) of the Nepali Congress came in third, securing 6,500 votes.

In the previous 2079 BS election, the RSP was trailing by 4,500 votes in this constituency. However, at that time, RSP was the leading party in proportional representation. This time, Uttam, who defected from the Nepali Congress to join the RSP, not only attacked the UML's fortress but also defeated the main competitor by more than four times the votes.

The status of the traditional forces in the electoral competition appears very fragile. In this constituency, the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) came in third place, surpassing the Nepali Communist Party. Hemjung Gurung of RPP secured 1,643 votes, while Hem Bahadur Thapa (Kiran) of CPN came in fifth place, shrinking to 1,276 votes. Kushal Gurung of Ujyalo Nepal Party received 1,201 votes.

After the major parties, the presence of independent candidates was not very effective. Independent candidate Basanta Raj Ghimire received 131 votes and Bishnu Prasad Tiwari received 130 votes. Olbahadur Gurung of the Mongol National Organisation crossed the three-digit mark by securing 119 votes, but the other 8 candidates had to settle for double-digit figures.