After the violent Gen-Z revolution, which overthrew the K P Sharma Oli government in September last year, peace and order finally seem to be returning to Nepal. General elections were held in Nepal on March 5, 2026, and the counting of the votes is underway on Friday (7th March). The voting trends so far indicate that the Hindu-majority nation is set to get its youngest Prime Minister, as the newly formed Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) led by Balen Shah is heading toward an electoral victory.
Rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah, who was the Mayor of Kathmandu till recently, has secured more than 15,000 votes in Jhapa-5 constituency. He was contesting against four-time Prime Minister and CPN-UML chair K P Sharma Oli. According to the Election Commission data, on 161 out of the total 165 seats, the 35-year-old Shah’s party has won six seats and is leading on 110 seats. The results of the elections will be announced on Saturday (8th March).
Notably, Nepal’s House of Representatives has a total of 275 seats. The representatives in 165 of these seats are elected, and the remaining 110 seats fall under the proportional representation system.
Balen Shah graduated with a civil engineering degree from Himalayan Whitehouse International College in Kathmandu. He received a postgraduate degree in structural engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) in Karnataka, India. He made his entry into politics in 2022, when he contested the Kathmandu mayoral elections as an independent candidate. He swept the elections, winning 61,767 votes, defeating candidates from the major political parties.
Shah was projected as the interim Prime Minister by the protestors following the Gen-Z uprising in Nepal. Shah has a strong social media presence and is said to have a considerable influence on Nepal’s youth. His popularity is not limited to Nepal, as he featured in Time Magazine’s Top 100 (2023) and was profiled by The New York Times.
He has been in touch with the US Embassy in Nepal and held meetings with Ambassador R. Thompson in 2022 and 2024. Shah showed an anti-India stance when he opposed the release of the Indian movie Adipurush in Nepal. Besides, he passed an order completely banning Indian movies in Kathmandu cinemas, which was reversed by Nepal’s Supreme Court.
