The 12th General Convention of the Nepali Congress elected acting President Sushil Koirala as the party’s new president on Tuesday.

Koirala obtained 1,652 votes while his closest rival Sher Bhadur Deuba secured 1,317. Third contestant Bhim Bahadur Tamang garnered 78 votes.

The counting of votes for other positions including general secretary, treasurer and central committee members will begin on Wednesday.

Of 3,088 representatives from across the country, 3,037 participated in the party election. 15 votes were declared invalid during the counting.

Altogether 338 candidates are competing for 64 positions of party office-bearers and central working committee members.

Sushil has become the sixth president NC and the fourth from the Koirala clan. Matrika Prasad Koirala, BP Koirala, Subarna Shumshere, Krishna Prasad Bhattarai and Girija Prasad Koirala had become NC presidents in the past since the formation of the party in 1950.

Koirala, 71, had joined politics in early 1953 and has been working for the party ever since. He has already worked as the party’s acting president, vice president and general secretary. He has also worked as the chief of the party’s foreign department.

He spent 16 years in exile after the royal takeover and introduction of Panchayat regime in 1960. This did not deter him from being part of the party’s socialist movement. He used to publish NC mouthpiece Tarun during his exile.

He got elected the central committee members in 1979 and was one of the active members in the campaign for multiparty in the same year. He participated in 1985 civil disobedient movement and 1990 popular movement. He was elected as a parliament member twice in 1991 and 1999 from Banke district.

Unmarried Koirala is known as saint leader for his modest lifestyle and integrity.

NC is the county’s oldest party to lead democratic forces of the country. This was first convention after NC’s unification with the faction led by party’s senior leader Sher Bahadur Deuba.

Koirala’s challenge ahead is to uphold the image of Koirala clan as a bastion of freedom, to reorganise and unite the party and define the ideology of socialism in a definite way to counter growing extremists.