Engineer. Organiser. Mayor of Palungtar.
A prosperous, beautiful and cultural Palungtar
Deepak Babu Kandel is a civil engineer who served as the first mayor of Palungtar Municipality from 2017 to 2022. He has been a Nepali Congress member since 2048 BS and is a general assembly member of the party’s 14th General Convention.
Winning margin in 2074 BS
Votes between him and the Maoist Centre candidate in the Palungtar mayoral race.
Years as mayor
A full term at Palungtar Municipality, from 2017 to 2022.
Nepali Congress member since
Thirty five years of continuous party and ward level work in Gorkha.
What he stands for
His politics follow the Nepali Congress line of democratic socialism. In practice that has meant four priorities, applied fairly consistently through the mayoral term.
Accountable local government
Budgets and plans published, decisions made in open meetings, and contractors held to the schedule they signed for.
Visible development
Roads, drinking water, schools and health posts before anything else, because those are the things residents use every day and can check for themselves.
The poorest households first
Where a service is limited, low income families get it first. The ward health insurance scheme was built on that basis.
A municipality that does not wait
Federal and provincial budgets are slow. The municipality should be writing its own plans and going after the money.
Roads, water, schools, health cover
The municipality was new in 2017 and had few systems of its own. The first year went into a development plan so every ward had something to measure its budget against. After that the work was ordinary, which is how it should be.
He funded a health insurance scheme for poor families in every ward by donating one full year of his mayoral salary and allowances.
In the news
Article links to be added before publishing.
Profile published after the Palungtar mayoral result
Coverage of the Congress win in Palungtar and what it meant for the Maoist and Naya Shakti vote in Gorkha.
Community homestay opened at Ligligkot
Reported as part of the push to turn local tourism into household income.
Computers handed to Amar Jyoti Janata Secondary School
Part of the programme to bring digital learning into community schools.
