Nepal's Balendra Shah wins majority

Centrist RSP party of rapper-turned-politician wins 182 seats

KATHMANDU:

Nepal's centrist RSP party of rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah won a majority in parliament with 182 seats, Election Commission results showed Thursday.

The March 5 vote elected a new 275-member House of Representatives, the lower house of parliament, with 165 seats chosen directly and 110 through a proportional representation vote.

"The counting of votes for the election of members of the House of Representatives... has been completed," Election Commission spokesman Narayan Prasad Bhattarai said in a statement.

In direct elections, RSP won 125 of the 165, and secured another 57 in PR votes, leaving them only two seats short of securing a powerful two-thirds majority.

The Nepali Congress, which was the biggest party in the last parliament, secured 38 seats and the Marxists of now-defeated KP Sharma Oli trailing with 25 seats. The Maoists have seven seats.

"A letter has been sent to the concerned political parties today to select the names of the candidates, and submit them to the Commission within three days," Bhattarai said.

The vote was the first since deadly September 2025 youth anti-corruption protests toppled the government.

The demonstrations, under a loose Gen Z banner, began over a brief social media ban but quickly tapped into broader grievances over corruption and a struggling economy.

Shah himself defeated veteran four-time prime minister KP Sharma Oli — whose Marxist-led government was ousted in the violence last year — in his own seat.

His victory over the 74-year-old Oli, and his rise from the capital's mayor to expected prime minister, caps a bold gamble and marks one of the most dramatic results in recent Nepali politics.