77th Anniversary of the Communist Party: A Journey of Unity and Division
9 Baisakh, Kathmandu. Amidst ongoing splits and challenges, Nepal’s Communist parties commemorate their founding anniversary today. Seventy-seven years ago, on this very day in Kolkata, India, the Nepal Communist Party was established. The founding General Secretary was Pushpalal Shrestha, with other founding leaders including Niranjan Govinda Vaidya, Narbahadur Karmacharya, Narayanvilas Joshi, and Motidevi Shrestha. Additionally, leaders such as Manmohan Adhikari, Tulsi Lal Amatya, and Keshar Jung Rayamajhi were involved in the party’s establishment.
The Nepal Communist Party was formed underground during the Rana autocratic regime with the goal of liberating the Nepalese people and nation from feudalism, comprador-bureaucratic capitalism, and imperialism. Manmohan Adhikari served as the party’s second General Secretary and Tulsi Lal Amatya as the third. In 1954, the Congress-led government imposed a ban on the Nepal Communist Party. In the first general election of 1959, the party won four seats. However, after King Mahendra dissolved the popularly elected government and introduced the Panchayat system, the Nepal Communist Party was again banned. During this period, the faction led by Keshar Jung Rayamajhi supported the Panchayat system, leading to a split within the party.
Amidst division, the then revolutionary activists in Jhapa launched the “class enemy extermination” campaign, known as the Jhapa revolution, which evolved into the CPN (Marxist–Leninist) and eventually the current CPN-UML. The factions led by Pushpalal and Manmohan reunited under the UML banner after 1990. Various groups led by Mohan Bikram Singh and Nirmal Lama, including CPN Chaum, CPN Mota Mashal, CPN Patalo Mashal, and CPN Ekta Kendra, later transformed into the Maoist faction. However, Mohan Bikram Singh still leads the Patalo Mashal group.
The Nepal Communist Party, which won four seats during its first election in 1959, split into different factions during the Panchayat era. After the 1990 People’s Movement, the then CPN (Marxist–Leninist) and Maoists united to form the UML, which became a strong opposition with 69 seats in parliament, while the then Janamorecha and today’s Maoists became the third largest party with 9 seats. The Maoists abandoned parliamentary politics in 1995 after launching the People’s War. When the Maoists boycotted the 1994 general election, the UML secured 88 seats, becoming the first communist single-party government in South Asia. After the UML split in 1997, it returned as the second largest party with 70 seats in the 1999 general election.
In the historic 2008 Constituent Assembly election, the CPN-Maoist emerged as the largest party with a direct-vote majority. In the 2013 Constituent Assembly election, UML became the second-largest party while the Maoists fell to third. During this period, the Nepal Communist Party saw several leaders serve as Prime Ministers, including Manmohan Adhikari, Madhav Kumar Nepal, Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda,’ Jhala Nath Khanal, Baburam Bhattarai, and KP Sharma Oli.
In the 2017 House of Representatives and Provincial Assembly elections, the two communist parties, UML and Maoist, formed an electoral alliance that won nearly two-thirds of the seats — the greatest success in almost 70 years of Nepal Communist Party history. Following this alliance, UML and Maoist merged on May 16, 2018, to form the Nepal Communist Party (NCP). However, amid internal conflicts that escalated to the Supreme Court, the party’s unification was annulled, causing UML and Maoist to revert to their previous statuses. The ruling NCP UML experienced division, with Madhav Kumar Nepal breaking off to form the CPN Unified Socialist under his leadership. He registered the Unified Socialist Party with the Election Commission on August 18, 2021, including 28 central members.
Following the events of the ‘Janajati’ movement on September 8-9, 2025, Nepal’s communist parties have seen both unity and polarization. On November 4, 2025, the Prachanda-led CPN Maoist and Madhav Nepal-led Unified Socialist, along with eight other communist factions, unified to form the ‘Nepali Communist Party.’ Prachanda was coordinator and Madhav Kumar Nepal co-coordinator. Approximately a dozen small groups later merged into this party. Nevertheless, in the House of Representatives election of March 5, 2026, the new party Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) won 182 seats alone, while Nepali Communist Party secured only 17 seats (8 constituency and 9 proportional) and UML obtained 25 seats (9 constituency and 16 proportional).
Shortly after the election, the newly formed government led by Balen arrested former Prime Minister and UML chairman KP Sharma Oli over accusations of suppressing the Janajati movement. Top leaders including Prachanda are currently under investigation for asset verification and other matters. Declining electoral support and controversies surrounding key leaders have placed communist parties under severe existential challenges.
On the occasion of the 77th founding anniversary of the Communist Party, Nepali Communist Party coordinator Prachanda issued a message emphasizing the need for a complete reorganization of the communist movement in Nepal and called for unity. While internal disputes have fragmented the communist parties and efforts at unification have failed, both leaders and workers are feeling disheartened. Furthermore, lapses in communist conduct and behavior among leaders have increased public disenchantment toward them.