Nepal’s Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) has secured a landslide victory in the country’s parliamentary election, the first to be held since last year’s youth-led protests that toppled the previous government.
According to the final results, the RSP won 182 seats, falling just two seats short of a two-thirds supermajority in the lower house of parliament. Despite this, it marks the largest victory by a single party in Nepal in decades.
The Nepali Congress finished second with 38 seats, while the Communist Party of Nepal–Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) came third with 25 seats. Voter turnout was reported at around 60 percent of the nearly 19 million eligible voters.
The result puts RSP leader Balendra Shah, a rapper-turned-politician, on track to become the country’s next leader. However, it is expected to take at least a week for the new government to be formed.
The victory represents a remarkable rise for the RSP, which was founded only in 2022 and placed fourth in the general election held that same year. Shah himself has limited political experience, having previously served only as the mayor of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu.
The scale of the victory is particularly significant given Nepal’s mixed electoral system, which combines first-past-the-post and proportional representation methods and is generally designed to prevent a single party from dominating parliament.
The election outcome reflects strong public demand for political change, particularly among young voters. During the campaign, political parties focused heavily on issues affecting the youth, including unemployment, economic stagnation and inequality.
These issues were also at the centre of the youth-led protests that erupted last year. The demonstrations initially began in opposition to a proposed social media ban but later expanded into broader protests against the political system and perceived class inequality.
Protesters also criticised what they described as the dominance of “nepo babies,” referring to children of established political figures.
A total of 77 people were killed during the protests. A subsequent investigation revealed that the country’s police chief had issued an order permitting the use of lethal force against thousands of unarmed demonstrators.
The protests ultimately led to the removal of then Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli from power. Oli later contested the election again as a prime ministerial candidate but suffered a decisive defeat.
His party, the CPN-UML, finished third in the election, and Oli himself lost the Jhapa 5 constituency—previously considered a stronghold—to Balendra Shah.
Meanwhile, Gagan Thapa, the new leader of the Nepali Congress, also lost his parliamentary seat to a candidate from the Rastriya Swatantra Party.
Source: BBC.
