Bahadur Mahara, the Maoist former combatant, now celebrates his victory in the June 28 local level election in which he ran for the post of ward chair from Shuklafanta Municipality-8 in Kanchanpur district on the CPN (Maoist Centre) ticket.

While celebrating his success in the election held for the first time around two decades, what he was also remembering were those days of struggle as the platoon commander of the People's Liberation Army ( PLA), the military force formed by the then rebelling CPN (Maoist). He had fought for the party for eight years.

But his personal experience and judgement is that the war of ballot is more complex and challenging than the war of bullet in terms of various conditions.

"We had arms, were united and guided by the same party ideology while in the war and we would feel that success was not so far," he said, adding that but contrary to this, in the war of ballots, he felt that there were frequent attacks from his 'rivals' on the alliance he had made for the election.

"There would be face-to-face or direct encounter and combat with enemies in the armed conflict, but attempts of assaults from rivals in disguise made my election journey tougher," he shares his personal experiences. Taking all adversities he had faced in the election as normal, he views that right plan and pro-people agenda would help win the people's hearts in the election. He said he was fully committed to fulfilling promises he made before the people during the election publicity campaign.

Revealing his future plan as elected representative, he has committed to carrying out numbers of development works like construction of roads and shrines, ending problems of landless squatters, stopping the drainage of Chure area, controlling soil erosion and registration of public land.

Other development agenda on the table is construction of embankments, reducing loss caused by wild animals and manage teachers enough at schools. Mahara, also chairperson of the Baijanath Community Users Group, emerged victorious in the election with 641 votes. RSS