Balendra Shah, a 35-year-old civil engineer turned rapper turned politician, is set to become Nepal's next prime minister after his Rastriya Swatantra Party — known by its initials RSP, or National Independent Party in English — swept the country's first parliamentary election since youth-led protests toppled the government in September 2025. Partial official results published Sunday by Nepal's Election Commission showed the RSP had already claimed 117 of 165 directly elected seats and was leading in eight additional constituencies, with vote counting still ongoing.

The proportional representation tally told a similar story. Under Nepal's system, voters cast two ballots — one for a candidate and one for a party — with 110 of the 275 House of Representatives seats allocated based on each party's share of the second ballot. The RSP was leading that count as well, with approximately 51 percent of the vote. Analysts said the combined numbers would give the party sufficient backing to form a single-party government, something Nepal has rarely seen in its turbulent modern political history.

"RSP set for a landslide victory," declared the Himalayan Times. "People's ballot revolt; shift in political paradigm," said Annapurna Post.

The Candidate and the Upset

Shah himself, better known simply as "Balen," delivered one of the most discussed individual results of the election when he defeated four-time former Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli in Oli's own southeastern district constituency, securing nearly four times as many votes as the 74-year-old incumbent. Oli's Communist Party of Nepal — Unified Marxist Leninist — which had governed Nepal until being pushed out by the September protests, trailed with just seven wins in early returns. The Nepali Congress, the other long-dominant party that had shared power with Oli's party for much of the post-monarchy era, won 17 seats, though its newly chosen leader, Gagan Thapa, was defeated by an RSP candidate.

Oli congratulated Shah in a post on X, wishing him "a smooth and successful" five-year tenure. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also offered congratulations, calling the peaceful conduct of the vote "a proud moment" in Nepal's democratic journey and pledging to work closely with the incoming government.

The RSP was founded in June 2022 by Rabi Lamichhane, a television personality who had built a following with a confrontational talk show that frequently targeted politicians and amplified public grievances. The party finished fourth in Nepal's November 2022 elections — a surprising debut for a four-month-old organization — but struggled to consolidate its position in subsequent years, with Lamichhane facing legal troubles over allegations of embezzling cooperative funds and the party's ideological identity remaining unclear to many voters.

Shah's entry into the RSP in December, just months before the March 5 election, transformed the party's profile. Widely known as Balen, he had won the 2022 Kathmandu mayoral race as an independent, the first outsider to hold the capital's top office. His background as one of Nepal's most prominent rappers gave him a public platform and social media reach that few Nepali politicians had ever matched. His song "Balidan" — sacrifice in Nepali — which addresses the country's upper class, has accumulated more than 12 million views on YouTube.

How the Campaign Was Run

The RSP's operation in the lead-up to the March 5 vote was notable for its scale and organization. The campaign was coordinated from the top three floors of the party's headquarters in Kathmandu's Balaju neighborhood, staffed by a research, strategy, and documentation department that oversaw 300 workers divided into three national teams. A separate 660-person social media operation supplemented the ground effort.

Shah's personal campaign schedule was deliberately calibrated. He delivered a major speech every eight days, a cadence that party officials described as intentional — enough time between appearances for each rally to generate sustained attention before the next one.

Financing came largely from the Nepali diaspora, particularly from Nepalis living in the United States, who contributed substantial funds to the central party operation. Individual candidates were responsible for their own local campaign costs, but the national infrastructure was underwritten by overseas donations.

The RSP also pursued a geographic strategy that broke with the historical concentration of Nepali political power in Kathmandu and the mountain belt. Shah contested from Jhapa-5, a constituency in the plains region of Madhesh — an area that is Nepal's most populous but has historically been underrepresented at the highest levels of government. At a January rally in the Madhesh provincial capital, Shah told thousands of supporters: "A Madhesi boy is going to become prime minister." The line went viral on social media.

The Uprising That Made It Possible

The election itself would not have happened when it did without the events of September 2025. What began as protests against a government ban on social media platforms rapidly grew into a mass movement focused on corruption, economic stagnation, and a political class that critics argued had held power for too long with too little to show for it. At least 77 people were killed in the unrest, and hundreds more were wounded when security forces opened fire on protesters who had attacked government buildings.

Shah emerged as a figurehead of the protests during that period. His song "Nepal Haseko" — Nepal Smiling — accumulated more than 10 million YouTube views during the demonstrations. Prime Minister Oli resigned in the uprising's aftermath, and an interim government led by Sushila Karki oversaw the transition to the March election.

Nepal's government-formed investigation commission into the September violence submitted its report on the same day results were being counted. Commission member Bigyan Raj Sharma told reporters the team had questioned more than 200 people and produced a 900-page report with more than 8,000 additional pages of documentation. Interim Prime Minister Karki said the report's implementation would be left to the incoming government.

What Comes Next

The scale of the RSP's win has created expectations that independent analysts say will not be easy to meet. Keshab Prasad Poudel, an independent political analyst, described the core challenge plainly: "The problem or challenge with this new party would be to deliver things, given the limited resources and the limited institutional support. Because people have high expectations, that doesn't necessarily mean that the new party can fulfill it."

Nepal enters the new government with roughly 20 percent of its nearly 30 million people still living in poverty, and with a per capita income and overall GDP that lag well behind regional peers. Shah campaigned on promises to double the country's GDP to $100 billion and create jobs, while highlighting health care and education for low-income Nepalis as central priorities. Final vote counts were expected to be completed later in the week.