Dr. Bhim Bahadur Rawal, commonly known as Bhim Rawal, is a prominent Nepali politician who has held several key government positions. He served as Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister of Nepal during the second Oli ministry and previously worked as Minister of Home Affairs in the Madhav Kumar Nepal cabinet. Rawal was one of six deputy prime ministers in the KP Sharma Oli government, alongside Bijay Kumar Gachhadar, C. P. Mainali, Chitra Bahadur K.C., Kamal Thapa, and Top Bahadur Rayamajhi—though he faced unproven accusations of facilitating the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) entry into Nepal. Earlier in his career, he also served in the Girija Prasad Koirala-led government (1998–1999) as Minister of Culture, Tourism, and Civil Aviation.
During the 2017 Nepalese parliamentary election, Rawal was projected by his comrades as a potential CPN-UML chairman. However, in the chairman race at the 10th General Congress of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist), he finished second to KP Sharma Oli, receiving only 10% of the vote. His political future has since been regarded as uncertain, although his candidacy was supported by Dudhkala Bista and Mahadev Bajgai. On July 18, 2021, Rawal announced his resignation from parliament, citing his desire to withdraw from politics, but later retracted his resignation in what many viewed as a move to retain public sympathy.
Rawal was born in Nepal’s Achham district and comes from a family with two sons. He earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Tribhuvan University before pursuing doctoral research on political violence and the Nepali Maoist insurgency. In the 1980s, he worked with the Nepal Bar Association as a lawyer specializing in legal awareness.
His political journey began in 1990 when he became an advisor to Jhalanath Khanal. From 1992 to 1993, he served as a member of the United Nations Election Commission in Cambodia, later aligning himself with Madhav Kumar Nepal. Rawal was elected to Parliament in 1994 and served as Minister of Commerce, Tourism, and Civil Aviation from 1994 to 1995. He held the same positions again from 1998 to 1999 while also serving as Minister of Science and Technology. In April 2008, he entered the second Nepalese Constituent Assembly as a proportional representative.
On the international stage, Rawal actively represented Nepal. In 2009, he discussed the issues of least developed nations at a meeting on the Millennium Development Goals and later spoke at the Third UN Corporate Sector Forum, where he addressed poverty and hunger. He urged both the government and the private sector to collaborate for economic growth and synergy. In 2014, while campaigning at a Seti-Kathmandu liaison committee, he was reportedly injured during an assault linked to Sharma Oli’s faction.