Balen Shah Poised for Prime Ministership After Landslide Win

Senior Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) leader Balendra (Balen) Shah is poised to become Nepal’s prime minister after a historic electoral victory.

The 36-year-old former mayor of Kathmandu Metropolitan City defeated former Prime Minister and CPN (UML) Chair KP Sharma Oli in Jhapa-5, winning by a margin of nearly 50,000 votes. Shah secured 68,348 votes, while Oli managed just 18,724.

The RSP is on course for a landslide victory, having already won 59 of the 165 first-past-the-post (FPTP) seats and leading in 62 constituencies. In the proportional representation (PR) vote count, the party has received over 300,000 votes out of nearly 567,000 counted so far.

Shah, also a rapper and an engineer, is the Rastriya Swatantra Party’s prime ministerial candidate.

Nepal voted on Thursday to elect the 275-member House of Representatives, the Lower House of the Federal Parliament. Of the total seats, 165 are chosen through FPTP, while 110 are allocated via proportional representation.

A party requires 138 seats to secure a majority and form the government. If the current trend continues, the RSP could win 184 seats, giving it a two-thirds majority and the power to amend the constitution.

Nepal has seen such parliamentary dominance only once before. In the country’s first general election in 1959, the Nepali Congress won 74 of 109 seats, securing a two-thirds majority and elevating BP Koirala to the prime ministership. However, that government was short-lived. In December 1960, King Mahendra staged a coup, dismissing the elected government, dissolving parliament, suspending the constitution, and banning political parties. Political leaders were imprisoned, and Nepal entered a 30-year partyless Panchayat system.