Topic: Girija Prasad Koirala

Girija Prasad Koirala, commonly known as G. P. Koirala (Nepali: गिरिजा प्रसाद कोइराला, born 1925), is a Nepalese politician and the President of the Nepali Congress, a major political party. He has been Prime Minister of Nepal four times, serving from 1991 to 1994, 1998 to 1999, 2000 to 2001, and from 2006 to 2008; he was also Acting Head of State from January 2007 to July 2008. He has been active in politics for over sixty years and is a pioneer of the Nepalese labour movement, having started a labor movement in the Jute mills of his hometown Biratnagar. In 1991 he became the first democratically elected Prime Minister since 1959, when his brother B. P. Koirala and the Nepali Congress party swept the country's first democratic election.

In 1948 Koirala founded the Nepal Mazdoor Congress, later known as the Nepal Trade Union Congress. Later, in 1952 he became the President of the Morang district Nepali Congress and held that office until he was arrested and imprisoned by King Mahendra following the 1960 royal coup. Upon his release in 1967, Girija Prasad Koirala, along with other leaders and workers of the party, was exiled in India until his return to Nepal in 1979. Koirala was General Secretary of the Nepali Congress Party from 1975 to 1991. Koirala was actively involved in the 1990 Jana Andolan which led to the abrogation of the Panchayat rule and the introduction of a multi-party politics in the country.

In Nepal's first multi-party democratic election in 1991, Koirala was elected as a Member of Parliament from the Morang-1 and Sunsari-5 constituencies. The Nepali Congress won 110 of the 205 seats in the Pratinidhi Sabha, the lower house of parliament. He was subsequently elected as the leader of the Nepali Congress parliamentary party and was appointed as Prime Minister by King Birendra.