Dr Baburam Bhattarai, a familiar name to Indian intellectuals and communist leaders, became Nepal's second Maoist prime minister after Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda's nine-month government in 2008-9, defeating his rival, former deputy prime minister Ram Chandra Paudel of the centrist Nepali Congress, historically close to India's Congress party.
Often compared to Dr Manmohan Singh, Bhattarai, one of Nepal's most successful finance ministers, polled the votes of 340 of the 575 MPs taking part in the election while his rival, Gandhian leader Ram Chandra Paudel who had spent over a dozen years in prison during pro-democracy movements, received 235 votes.
Paudel said his party would play the role of a constructive responsible opposition and was ready to help in the drafting of a new constitution. However, it would not join the Maoist government. Many of the parties supporting Bhattarai also warned him that the support was conditional: he would have to deliver on his party's promise that it would take the peace process forward in 45 days, especially dismantle the Maoists' People's Liberation Army.
The Maoist victory was ensured with five ethnic parties from the Terai plains, the Unified Democratic Madhesi Morcha with its 71 MPs, agreeing to support him hours before the election. While two parties - the royalist Rastriya Prajatantra Party Nepal, that is also demanding a Hindu state, and the leftist Nepal Workers' and Peasants' Party boycotted the exercise, an independent MP from the Terai, Baban Singh, warned the winner that he had a bumpy ride ahead as his new comrades were liable to desert him for anyone who offered better ministries.
Unlike the previous elections, Bhattarai's victory has been greeted with some enthusiasm in Nepal because of his academic excellence, clean image and efficiency shown as Prachanda's finance minister in 2008-2009. He had also won the 2008 election from Gorkha with the highest number of votes.
However, the crown comes with several thorns. To remind him how rocky the future is going to be, an ethnic organisation called a bandh on Sunday while Maoist trade union members demonstrated in Kathmandu after their leader, Shalik Ram Jamkattel, was attacked and injured badly by a unidentified group on Saturday night.
The victory comes at a time the new Indian ambassador to Nepal, Jayant Prasad has just assumed office. Prachanda has always blamed the Indian government for failing to win the prime ministerial election in 2010, especially after his Madhesi allies deserted him following a scandal about Prachanda's aide Krishna Bahadur Mahara seeking NRS 50 crore from a Chinese businessman to buy MPs' vote.
Though a moderate who has advocated maintaining friendly relations with India and focusing on peace instead of beginning yet another armed revolution, Bhattarai will also have to work hard to assure India that his government will not be hostile to the southern neighbour. The Prachanda government and the communist-Maoist governments had waged war on Prasad's successor Rakesh Sood and raised anti-India slogans.
Maoists also burnt down Indian company GMR's power project office in western Nepal and forced the closure of ITC subsidiary Surya Nepal's garments factory in eastern Nepal.
Bhattarai would also have to ensure that the new constitution is ready by November, an impossible task if he fails to win the Nepali Congress' trust.
Dr Baburam Bhattarai- A profile..
In the 16th century, Nepal's Gorkha principality had the custom of choosing a king by a simple method. All aspirants took part in a race and the fleetest one was crowned king for a year. Though not a strong man, wily Drabya Shah enlisted the support of several clans to win the race. One of them was Gajanand Bhattarai. Centuries later, history extracted its revenge on Sunday with Bhattarai's descendant, Dr Baburam Bhattarai, becoming the prime minister of Nepal as well as the deputy leader of the party that ousted from power Shah's descendant, King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah.
The first prime minister from the western region, Bhattarai proved his stronghold there three years ago when he mustered the highest number of votes in the historic constituent assembly election. The son of a poor farmer, Bhattarai had been Nepal's wonder kid, standing first in the school-leaving exam as well as the intermediate exam.
A passage to India came with a scholarship under the Colombo Plan to study in the Chandigarh College of Architecture, followed by an M Tech at Delhi School of Planning and Architecture, and finally, a PhD from the Jawaharlal Nehru University under the guidance of Prof Attiya Habib. It was at JNU that he met his wife, Hisila Yami, also a Maoist leader and minister in the caretaker government, as well as Arundhati Roy and Indian communist leaders as well as leftist intellectuals.
An IT-savvy man who has his own web site --- www,baburambhattarai.com -- and his page on Facebook, Bhattarai fell out with Maoist numero uno Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda during the course of the decade-old "People's War" and was suspended along with Hisila and other leaders critical of Prachanda. Nepal's local media recently reported that he was virtually under house arrest in a remote village at that time and could have also lost his life. Bhattarai was also jailed by the state four times when the armed insurrection started.
Though the differences with Prachanda were papered over for the sake of party unity, they have not been entirely ironed out. They erupted several times recently, creating three different camps within the party and also causing Prachanda to ally with other parties and support their candidates instead of letting Bhattarai contest the prime ministerial poll earlier.
Sunday's victory will probably not be to the liking of a section within the Maoists themselves. Bhattarai had received death threats this summer from a trade union leader loyal to Prachanda.
An author whose hard-hitting memoir was released this year, Bhattarai is also a Bollywood connoisseur. He has been noted trooping to the theatres to watch acclaimed Hindi films like Rajneeti and Rann.
Though friendly towards India, Bhattarai favours scrapping the Indo-Nepal Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1950. He also feels some of the tension in Indo-Nepal relations stems from the open border the two neighbours share. While his party supports the Indian Maoists ideologically, he says there are no links with them. Instead, it wants diplomatic and business relations with India.
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