KATHMANDU: Rastriya Swatantra Party candidate Dr. Swarnim Wagle has been elected as the Member of Parliament from Tanahu-1 by a wide margin.

However, official announcement is yet to be made.

Wagle, who recently quit the Nepali Congress and became a candidate for the House of Representatives from RSP, defeated Nepali Congress candidate Govinda Bhattarai by 14,388 votes.

While Wagle got 34,480 votes, Bhattarai got 20,092 votes. CPN-UML’s Sarbendra Khanal, who is in third place, received 8,555 votes.

Who is Dr. Swarnim Wagle?

Wagle is an Economist in Nepal, and holds a doctorate in economics from the Australian National University, a Master’s in International Development (MPA/ID) from Harvard University, and BSc (Econ) from the London School of Economics.

He is the former Chief Economic Advisor at the UNDP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific in New York covering 36 countries.

Gorkha-born Dr. Waglé served the National Planning Commission (NPC) in the Government of Nepal for three intermittent years, first as Member and then as Vice-Chair between 2014 and 2018.

He has also worked as an international development professional for more than 20 years, including as Senior Economist at The World Bank in Washington, DC and UNDP in New York, Hanoi and Colombo. Widely published, he co-edited The Great Upheaval (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and co-authored the global Human Development Report (2013) titled The Rise of the South. From 2002 to 2007, he co-led the UNDP Asia Trade Initiative.

Dr. Wagle is also an eminent member of the World Bank’s South Asia Championing and Visioning Process.

Having undertaken short-term assignments at the Asian Development Bank (Manila) and the International Trade Center (Geneva), he also served as South Asia editor of Harvard Asia Quarterly in 1999-2000.