KATHMANDU: Rastriya Prajatantra Party has elected Lokendra Bahadur Chand as its new chairman on Sunday.

According to Kiran Giri, co-spokesperson of the party, 63 out of 103 central members voted to elect Chand as the top leader of the party.

This decision has removed Pashupati Shamsher Rana from the chairman's berth.

The party has submitted the signature of the Central Committee members at the Election Commission informing it about the decision made for the leadership, Giri said.

Chand served as Nepal's prime minister for four times -- once during Panchayat regime, once briefly at the end of Panchayat system and twice after the restoration of multi-party system.

Chand had established a new party Rastriya Prajatantra Party (Chand) which vied in the 1991 elections.

After dismal performance of leaders and parties with the Panchayat background, two parties RPP (Chand) and Rastriya Prajatantra Party (Thapa), led by former Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa, unified.

The party, however, split in 1997 only to get reunited the following  year.

The party witnessed another vertical split in 2005 when Thapa formed Rastriya Janashakti Party.

Choosing Thapa as the chairman, Rastriya Janashakti Party merged with the RPP on the eve of Constituent Assembly elections in 2013.

After Thapa announced that he would take retirement from the party leadership, the faction close to Chand had announced that the latter was chosen the party's chairman in June 2014. They had briefly taken over the party's central office at Chabahil also.

With support from the majority of the party's Central Committee, Thapa, however, installed Rana as his successor.

Challenging the decision, Chand and Prakash Chandra Lohani had moved the apex court on August 7, 2014, demanding its intervention in leadership row of the party.

Stating that four leaders Thapa, Chand, Lohani and Rana were supposed to lead the party on rotation basis as per the decision of the party’s general convention the previous year, the petitioners had claimed that Chand had assumed the post of party chairman on May 19 after Thapa stepped down from the top post.