By Our Reporter After a lengthy exercise lasting for a month to get a favourable Speaker, the struggle in the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) culminated with defeat of powerful chairman KP Sharma Oli and triumph of another chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal. Dahal succeeded to elect his loyal Agni Prasad Sapkota Speaker of the House of Representatives unanimously. Oli had tried to give the post to former Speaker Subas Nembang. As Sapkota became the lone candidate to file his nomination to the post of Speaker on Tuesday, he has virtually succeeded Krishna Bahadur Mahara, who resigned in October last year on a sex scandal. The Speaker election is scheduled for January 26. However, Sapkota’s election as speaker will not be free from controversy as he is accused of killing a man in Sindhupalchowk and the case is pending in the court. As the ruling NCP enjoys a comfortable majority in the 275-member House of Representatives, the main opposition Nepali Congress did not file  its candidate for the post. Even in March 2018 election of the Speaker, the NC had left the ground for Mahara. Sapkota’s candidacy was supported by former speaker and deputy leader of the ruling NCP Subas Nembang and seconded by Whip Dev Gurung, former speaker Onsari Gharti and RJP-N leader Laxmanlal Karna. Sapkota, 62, was elected to the House of Representatives from Sindhupalchowk. Besides the tussles between the former Maoists and UML, Deputy Speaker Dr. Shiva Maya Tumbahamphe’s stance not to resign from the post had delayed the election of the Speaker. House meetings were deferred thrice due to inability of Oli and Dahal to finalise the name of the Speaker. It was reported tha Bam Dev Gautam had to intervene to finalise the name of Speaker by forcing PM Oli to give up his stance by throwing a dinner for the two leaders in his residence. Earlier on Monday, Deputy Speaker Shiva Maya Tumbahamphe resigned from the post, paving the way for the ruling Nepal Communist Party to elect its new Speaker. Tumbahamphe tendered her resignation to the Parliament Secretariat a day after the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) decided to field Agni Sapkota as its candidate for the post of the Speaker. Addressing the first session of the House on Monday, Tumbahamphe announced her resignation. “Due to unexpected situation the House of Representatives has been without its leader and that has been causing some uneasiness. So I decided to tender my resignation and pave the way for the election of the Speaker,” she said. Tumbahamphe said that she performed her best with honesty during her two years’ stint as the Deputy Speaker. “The time I spent here was a golden time of my life,” she said. Tumbamphe herself was staking her claim for the Speaker but the ruling party asked her to resign. She also expressed her ire on the patriarchal mindset of rulers and said she had become the victim of the patriarchal society. “We fought against royal system and easily achieved the desired success on that but efforts are still required to fight the patriarchal mindset of the society,” she said. It took almost a month for the ruling party chairs Oli and  Dahal  to agree on a name for the Speaker. The winter session of the parliament began on December 20, 2019.