Kathmandu, March 20:His Majesty King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev has appointed Nepali Congress’s President and newly elected Parliamentary Party Leader Girija Prasad Koirala the new Prime Minister.

His Majesty has also thanked former Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai and the members of his cabinet for carrying out works entrusted to them during the last nine months, according to a Royal Palace circular.

Koirala’s hard-won appointment came two days after he was elected the NC’s Parliamentary Party Leader following the resignation by his predecessor Bhattarai on March 16, a day after he resigned as the Prime Minister.

Bhattarai had resigned following a renewed pressure from 69 rebel Congress lawmakers who moved a no-trust motion against him for the second time in a month.

In mid-February, 58 MPs had moved a similar no-trust motion that had prompted 11 ministers to quit under moral grounds ‘since the majority of the MPs from the ruling party had said they had lost confidence in the Prime Minister.’

Koirala received just as many votes (69) against his rival Sher Bahadur Deuba’s 43 in the House of Representatives where the party controls 113 seats.

Some of dissident lawmakers, who had teamed up against Bhattarai and signed the motion, defected to Deuba as he made up his mind to contest against Koirala.

Koirala is now expected to announce a cabinet shortly.

Korala’s latest take-over as the elected Parliamentary Party Leader has ended, at least temporarily, the debates in the ruling party that the Congress leadership should be transferred to younger Congress leaders as argued by Bhattarai in his departing speech that was televised nationally. Bhattarai announced his decision to quit as the PM in that speech.

With the latest take-over through first-ever democratic exercise, Koirala comes back to power for the second time when his party controls a comfortable majority in the 205-member Lower House of Parliament.

However, Koirala’s journey to the highest public office began in his mid sixties when he was elected the unanimous Congress leader at the House on May 22nd 1991 after his election to the House from two constituencies early that month.

That year, Koirala was sworn in as the first democratically elected Prime Minister in over three decades to head a majority government until November 1994, when the country went to an early poll 18 months ahead of the schedule.

The mid-term poll that year created a hung parliament with no party securing a majority in House. The Communist Party of Nepal (UML), which had won the largest number of seats, formed a minority government.

As a political strategist, Koirala courted Rastriya Prajatantra Party which controlled crucial 20 seats which were required to sack UML, and engineered the Communist government’s exit from power in nine months over largely “populist budget.” Nepal Sadbhavana Party with three seats also joined the campaign to oust that government.

The ouster of UML government paved the way for the premiership of the Congress’s youth Leader Deuba, who had won Koirala’s trust as Home Minister for three and half years.

As the first second generation leader Deuba took the reins of power in September 1995 and continued till early 1997. Deuba, under pressure from the opposition to seek a vote of confidence in the House, lost by two votes and this distanced him from Koirala.

Koirala returned to power in early 1998 under a pact with mainstream Rastriya Prajatantra Party and remained in power until the general elections of 1999 that restored Congress’s majority as vowed by him between 1995 and 1999.

In January 1999, Koirala proved his political acumen again when he made a surprise announcement: Bhattarai is the next Prime Minister, a statement that re-united the Congress ranks and file who had been divided into the group of 74 and 36, who abstained from the House bringing down Koirala’s government over a crucial motion of thanks to the King.

A militant in nature in the early days, Koirala’s political career started in the 1940s when he ignited total class conscious in by organising the Jute Mill strike in Biratnagar, his home town. He was arrested and made to walk for 45 days to reach Kathmandu by the Ranas for this.

That could never be a reason for him to quit politics and look for alternatives. Koirala the youngest of four brothers was born to the late Krishna Prasad Koirala in 1925 in Tadi, Saharsha district of Bihar in India where his family was forced into exile.

The Prime Minister’s childhood saw an era of turmoil in the Indian subcontinent and he grew up in a political atmosphere of revolt against the oppressive Rana regime in Nepal and the births of Raj in India.

Before completing his higher education he jumped into active politics and involved himself in the Indian independence movement and the revolution of 1950-51 in Nepal to overthrow the Rana regime. It was during this period when he orchestrated the first industrial revolt in Biratnagar jute mill, which ignited labour unrest all over the nation.

The royal coup of 1960 saw the end of nascent democracy and he again saw the walls of prison along with his brother late B. P. Koirala, late Ganesh Man Singh and Bhattarai, the then acting Congress President.

He has spent seven years in prison and was released in 1967 after 21 days of hunger strike. Soon after his release from the jail, the death of his wife Sushma Koirala in 1968 plunged him into deep personal tragedy.

However, Koirala did not feel deterred and continued re-organising the NC and worked for the restoration of the multiparty democracy. In 1971, he went in exile in India along with senior NC leaders and workers where he spent eight years.

After five years of armed struggle against the Panchayat system and with the new philosophy of national reconciliation propounded by late B. P., the future Prime Minister returned to Nepal under general amnesty in 1979 just before the national referendum.