[6] After the end of his term in 1994, he did not contest the mid-term elections and managed the Humla Conservation and Development Committee, a non-governmental organisation.
[3][7] He was a politburo member of the CPN (Maoist Centre) at the time and the party suspended him for contesting against the candidate of the left alliance.
[9][6] He served as a member of the State Management and Good Governance Committee of the 5th House of Representatives.
[10] He joined CPN (UML) on 3 October 2022 and contested the 2022 provincial elections for Karnali from Humla 1 (B), but lost to incumbent chief minister Jeevan Bahadur Shahi by a margin of over 4,000 votes.
[13] Lama features prominently in Places in Knots (2022), Martin Saxer's anthropological study of remoteness and connectivity in the Nepal Himalayas.