Ex-rapper Balendra Shah’s party wins big in Nepal parliamentary election

Ex-rapper Balendra Shah’s party dominates Nepal vote as results published

Nepal’s electoral commission published results Thursday showing the Rastriya Swatantra Party, led by rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah, won the country’s parliamentary election and secured a strong majority in the House of Representatives. The election was Nepal’s first since a youth-led revolt last year, and it concluded a political cycle that followed last year’s protests against corruption and poor governance.

The Rastriya Swatantra Party, founded in 2022, won 125 directly elected seats and an additional 57 seats under Nepal’s proportional representation system, for a total of 182 seats out of 275 in the House of Representatives. In the same results, the Nepali Congress came in second with 38 seats.

In Nepal’s House of Representatives, voters directly elect 165 lawmakers, while the remaining 110 seats are allocated through proportional representation based on party vote shares. Under the process described by the electoral commission, parties are then asked to provide the names of members to fill the proportional-representation seats they won, after which they report to the president.

Once the president is informed, the president summons the new parliament, which then elects a new prime minister. That prime minister would need the support of half the members, and the process is expected to take several days before Nepal names a new government.

Balendra Shah, who is the Rastriya Swatantra Party’s prime ministerial candidate, previously won the 2022 Kathmandu mayoral race. He also emerged as a leading figure in the 2025 uprising that ousted former Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli.

The AP report said the election results give the Rastriya Swatantra Party nearly two-thirds of seats in the House, posing a direct challenge to Nepal’s two long-dominant parties: the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist). Last year’s protests that helped drive the political upheaval began after a social media ban and then expanded into a revolt against the government.

The account also described violence during the uprising, saying dozens of people were killed and hundreds more injured when protesters attacked government buildings and police opened fire on them. In the aftermath of that turmoil, the parliamentary vote results published Thursday now set the timetable for how quickly Nepal can form a new government under the newly seated legislature.