Kathmandu, Feb. 9 -- Nepal Samajbadi Party (Naya Shakti), led by former prime minister Baburam Bhattarai, commenced its first national convention at the Nepal Academy, Kathmandu on Sunday. The convention, attended by 1,500 representatives, will elect an 11-member leadership team and a 99-member central committee.

Bhattarai, a key figure in Nepal's Maoist insurgency, left the Maoist party in 2015, shortly after the promulgation of the new constitution from the Constituent Assembly. He founded the Naya Shakti Party in 2016, aiming to establish an alternative political force. He later merged his party, in May 2019, with then Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum led by Upendra Yadav to form Sanghiya Samajbadi Party, which eventually in 2020 merged with ...