Vice chairperson of the Nepal Communist Party (Unified Marxist-Leninist) Chairperson of All Nepal Women's Association Minister of Defense Born in 1961 in Bhojpur district A few people had heard of Bidhya Bhandari before she married Madan Bhandari, a prominent leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) who died in a car accident in 1993. Some people criticized her for being a 'widow politician', common in South Asian countries, when she contested in the parliamentary election of 1994 by succeeding her husband and won. She proved herself to be a 'real successful politician' in the eighth general convention of the CPN (UML), held in March 2009, by being elected vice president of her party.
She was born in June 1961 in Ambote village of Bhojpur district in eastern Nepal to a well-to-do farmer's family of Brahmins. She was a lucky girl in Nepali society who had seldom experienced gender discrimination in her childhood. Her father Ram Bahadur Pandey was headmaster at a local high school. Her grandfather Tilak Bahadur Pandey was a social worker as well as a Pradhan Pancha, a powerful post in the village during the Panchayati period.
