Agni Sapkota

Agni Sapkota (born 7 March 1960, Sindhupalchok, Kubinde) is a Nepalese politician. He hails from a low- middle class peasant family of Sindhupalchok District, Nepal.

Agni Sapkota is the member of the Constituent Assembly, elected from the election held on November 2013. He is the spokesperson of Unified CPN (Maoist). Sapkota is member of the central committee of Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and in-charge of the publicity and education department of the party. Sapkota had served as a Minister for Information and Communication from May to July 2011.

Sapkota was a Politburo member before party decides to keep only 'Chairman' in Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) from 2012. He already served the post of in-charge of Tamshiling State committee of the party.

Sapkota is also a member of historic Constituent Assembly 2008. He was elected from Sindhupalchok constituency no-2 in the first-past-the-post system. He is one of 10 members of the elected Constituent Assembly to win with the largest difference than their competitors.

A post graduate from Tribhuvan University, Sapkota had taught for 16 years before he formally joined the politics. He is a former General Secretary of Nepal National Teachers Association (a common organisation of the teachers in Nepal who believed in left ideology). Because of his professional background he is widely addressed as 'Agni sir' all over the country.

Agni Sapkota started his political life in 1975 as a student activist. He took the communist party membership in 1978 and served as the founder secretary of CPN (Fourth Convention) of Sindhupalchowk in 1980. He became a full-time political activist in 1991 resigning from the post of head-master of a high school. Then he became a candidate of House of Representative. Unfortunately, he was not elected.

Sapkota became the central committee member of Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) in 1995. When the party decided to initiate armed struggle, he went underground in 1996 and led the movement continuously.

Sapkota led several party committees and battles during the 10-year-long people's war. He was elected politburo member from the second national conference held in February 2001. He was one of three members of dialogue team from the Maoist Party in 2001. During 10-year people's war Maoist's party has exercise parallel state called 'United revolutionary People's Council', he was also the central member of the 41-member United Revolutionary People's Council announced in November 2001.

Agni Sapkota served as a Minister for Information and Communication for very short time. During his very short term as a Minister of Information and Communication, a frequency policy was formulated as well as frequency distribution system was established as the state’s resources. Moreover, as the Communications Minister, Sapkota ensured budged for different facilities to journalists including life insurance and capacity building trainings of journalists as a part of role of the state for the promotion and development of the Press.

Agni Sapkota was born in Kubinde VDC of Sindhupalchok District. He was born in a low-middle class peasant family. He is married to Tara Devi and they have three sons. He completed his secondary school education from Krishna Ratna Ganga High School, Chautara.