Bharat Mohan Adhikari: The Initiator of “Aafno Gaaun Aafai Banaau”
Bharat Mohan Adhikari was a communist leader of Nepal, who is credited for introducing the popular old-age pension scheme and “build your village on your own” project (आफ्नो गाउं आफै बनाउ), as a finance minister during the first communist government in the country. He was born in 1936 at Bhawarpurna VDC in the Mahottari district of Nepal. Adhikari’s father, Ram Chandra, was a freedom fighter who faced confiscation of property by the Rana rulers for protesting against them. Unlike his elder brother Man Mohan Adhikari, who was a founding member of the Nepal Communist Party, Bharat Mohan joined politics at a later stage of his life. A lawyer by a profession, he performed dual work, as a party cadre and the legal counsel to his clients in the court, for a long time. He also worked as a family lawyer of some big business houses in the country. Adhikari, also faced jail terms of over a year for participating in protests against the Panchayat regime. As a legal expert, he also worked as a member of the Constitution Drafting Recommendation Commission in 1990 after the restoration of democracy. He was elected three times in Parliament from Morang.
A Standing Committee member in then CPN-UML, Bharat Mohan Adhikari had announced his retirement from active politics in 2014. Adhikari died on 2 March 2019 from multiple organ failure stemming from a severe case of COPD.
Note: Bharat Mohan Adhikari was a younger brother of famous Communist leader and former Prime Minister Late Man Mohan Adhikari
