KATHMANDU- Former minister and leader of the Nepali Congress (NC), Chiranjivi Wagle, 58, is probably the first among a breed of Nepali politicians who earned a marked level of notoriety by abusing power in the 1990s. Wagley is also the first former minister to be convicted of corruption after 1990.
With the party turning a deaf ear to his wrong deeds and the judiciary failing to deliver speedy justice, Wagle continued to use money and the muscles that he gathered in the past. Born into a middle class family in the hilly district of Gorkha, Wagle was quick enough to amass wealth by abusing power when he was Minister for Information and Communication in the Girija Prasad Koirala-led government in 1991.
Wagle joined politics as a student leader in the early 1970s and participated in the democratic movement. During Krishna Prasad Bhattarai’s tenure as the party president, Wagle became a CWC member for the first time in 1981. He served his party as a CC member for over two decades. He had already become a controversial figure then, but the NC leadership was reluctant to suspend him.
Wagle was elected lawmaker in the first general elections held after the restoration of democracy in 1990. Though he was inducted in the Koirala Cabinet, he was kicked out after six months as factional politics in NC peaked. That made him a Koirala rival. Wagle became Minister for Physical Planning and Works in the Sher Bahadur Deuba-led government in 2002.
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