Biography of Khanal

KATHMANDU, Feb 24: Jhala Nath Khanal was born on March 20, 1950 at Sakhejung of Ilam district. He acquired membership of the Communist Party of Nepal in 1968. Seven years later, he rose to the leadership level at the Coordination Center -- the party´s political wing. Soon after in 1981, he became general secretary of the CPN(Marxist-Leninist) following the dismissal of CP Mainali from the post. Khanal ran the party until 1989.



Khanal has spent seven years in jail and remained underground for 12 years. [break]



After the restoration of democracy in 1990, Khanal was appointed Minister for Forest and Soil Conservation in the interim government led by Krishna Prasad Bhattarai. In 1997, he served as Minister for Information and Communication in a coalition government led by Lokendra Bahadur Chand.



In last year´s Constituent Assembly (CA) elections, Khanal was elected from Ilam constituency-1. He is parliamentary party leader of the CPN-UML and chairman of the Pushpa Lal Memorial Foundation. He had won parliamentary elections in 1991 and 1994 from the same Ilam constituency.



He became general secretary of the CPN-UML in the wake of the CA poll that brought a humiliating defeat for then incumbent general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal. Nepal later resigned from his post, citing his poll debacle. Khanal has also served the party as head of its international bureau and as its acting general secretary.



Khanal always appears in public neat and well-dressed. Within the party and outside, Khanal is considered an opponent of People´s Multiparty Democracy (PMD), the Nepali-style communist ideology propounded by popular communist leader the late Madan Bhandari. PMD is officially the main guiding principle of the CPN-UML. Khanal spends his leisure writing poetry and reading books. The author of "Roadmap for Democratic Nepal", Khanal has written nearly a dozen books. He has also written two important documents on the Nepali communist movement and has published articles in various newspapers and other publications.



Lately, Khanal has been criticized for being too close to the ruling Maoists. Many analysts see Khanal’s hand in the UML joining the Maoists in the current coalition government.



Khanal is a graduate in Political Science from Tribhuvan University. He is married to Ravi Laxmi Chitrakar, and they have a son, Nirbhik Chitrakar Khanal. A lecturer at Tri Chandra College, Ravi Laxmi Chitrakar, who has an M Sc degree, also used to be active in Nepal´s communist politics.

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