Balendra Shah, known to most Nepalis simply as ‘.Rapper Bailen has been officially elected to the country’s House of Representatives from Jhapa-5 constituency with 68,348 votes – the highest ever. Nepal’s election history, He surpassed the previous record set by the same person whom he defeated.
That man is Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, a four-time former prime minister and president of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist), who got just 18,734 votes in the area long considered his political stronghold.
Balen Shah, until recently the mayor of Kathmandu, has led his centrist Rashtriya Swatantra Party (RSP) to a majority in direct parliamentary elections, and may even surpass the overwhelming two-thirds tally. As of Sunday afternoon, March 8, the party has won nearly 100 of the 165 directly elected seats and is leading in more than a dozen constituencies.
RSP made a clean sweep of all 15 parliamentary seats in Kathmandu Valley. By any measure, it’s a debacle.
Ballen, the man of rap and record
Balen, 35, is apparently destined to become the next Prime Minister of Nepal. If he does so, he will be the youngest person to hold this position in Nepal’s parliamentary history.
More than 40% of Nepal’s population of about 30 million is under the age of 35, yet the leadership of its established parties remains in their 70s. The mismatched relationship had been going on for years. In 2026, a protest led by Gen-Z begins and Oli is removed from the post of Prime Minister.
Balen Shah will also be the first Madhesi to hold the post, an ethnic group from Nepal’s southern Terai plains who make up about a third of the population but have historically sought a greater share of power. The community is linguistically and culturally spread across Nepal and India, speaking Maithili among other languages.
Ballen, who is a structural engineer besides being a rapper, had resigned as mayor of the capital Kathmandu before resigning to contest the national elections. His rise is not accidental. In December 2025 he formally joined the RSP, was declared its prime ministerial candidate and decided to contest the elections Jhapa-5The experienced leader was directly challenging Oli in almost every election since 2008. His campaign was modern and systematic. It relied on an extensive social media operation and significant funding from the Nepalese diaspora.
his song’Nepal Haseko’ – Nepal Smiling – received more than 10 million YouTube views during last year’s protests. But according to analysts, his record as mayor of Kathmandu, his language of accountability and his refusal to engage with established party machines drew voters to him. kathmandu post.
Gen-Z protests fuel growth
The elections were held in September 2025, following protests led by Gen Z demanding an end to corruption, nepotism and the old leadership; And toppled PM Oli’s coalition government. At least 77 protesters, mostly students, died in clashes with police.
Nepal’s Generation They wanted a generational change from the entrenched group.
President Ramchandra Paudel dissolved Parliament on 12 September. Gen-Z group chose Sushila KarkiA former Chief Justice, as acting Prime Minister. There was about 60% turnout in the voting held on March 5. Election officials described the process as largely peaceful.
How does Nepal’s parliamentary system work?
This was Nepal’s third parliamentary election since the constitution came into effect in 2015, seven years after the monarchy was formally abolished.
Nepal currently follows a mixed electoral system. The lower house – the House of Representatives – has 275 members. Of these, 165 are elected through the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system, where individual candidates contest elections in specific constituencies. The remaining 110 are elected through proportional representation (PR).
The FPTP element is straightforward; The candidate with the most votes wins the seat.
The PR system is more complex and will be allocated according to total vote share. Under the proportional system, the entire country is treated as a single constituency, and all votes are aggregated together. Parliamentary seats are then allocated to parties according to the percentage of votes they receive.
To qualify for proportional seats, a party must secure at least 3% of the total valid votes. Parties falling below this threshold do not get any seats, and their votes are completely excluded from the seat-allocation calculations.
The Electoral Commission uses the Sainte-Lagu method, a widely used formula for vote apportionment in proportional systems. Under this method, a party’s total votes are divided by a series of divisors (odd numbers 1,3,5 and so on), and seats are allocated based on the highest resulting values until all seats are filled.
let’s do the math
Imagine that five parties have qualified after winning at least 3% of the votes. And there are 10 seats to give. Imagine, Party A has 500,000 votes, Party B has 300,000 votes, Party C has 200,000 votes, and so on.
Election Commission of Nepal Line them up and assign seats one by one.
- In Round 1, each party puts its entire vote on the table. Party A has the most votes, so it wins seat number one. But as soon as he wins, his score is divided by the odd number divisor 3. Therefore Party A’s numbers reduce from 500,000 to 166,667.
- In Round 2, Party B still has the full 300,000 on the table. This is the highest number ever, so it wins seat number two. After this, his votes are now divided by 3. Now he has 100,000.
- In Round 3, Party C still has the full 200,000. She is the highest, so she wins seat number three. Its score is now divided by 3 for the next round; It came down to 66,667.
- In Round 4, Party A is back in the race with its 166,667. He beats everyone else, so he wins seat number four. It has now won two seats, so its total original votes (500,000) are now divided by the next odd number divisor 5; Falling to 100,000.
You can see the pattern. RSP started with a huge lead but were punished every time they won. Other parties with undivided scores also continue to get their turns. This means that overall vote share matters to parties even if they fail to get enough individual seats.
Furthermore, the PR nominee list already submitted by the parties should reflect the diverse population of Nepal with specified proportions for Dalits, indigenous nationalities, Khas-Aryan, Madhesi, Tharu and Muslim communities, as per the Constitution.
At least 33% of the total membership of Parliament should be women. If the direct-election (FPTP) results fall short of that number, additional women are elected from the parties’ PR lists to meet the requirement.
Democracy is still finding its feet
Nepal was an absolute monarchy until multi-party democracy was implemented due to a popular movement in 1990. An estimated 17,000 people were killed in the decade-long Maoist insurgency that began in 1996. The conflict ended with a comprehensive peace agreement in 2006 and the monarchy was abolished two years later, when Nepal was declared a federal democratic republic.
The Constitution of 2015 is the seventh constitution of the country. It established the current federal structure with seven provinces and a mixed electoral system. It was the result of years of difficult negotiations and came just weeks after a devastating earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people.
Analysts say Nepal has had 10 prime ministers since 2008, including Maoist insurgency leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal or ‘Prachanda’ (fierce man), who has since joined politics.
The Communist-Maoist party has split; Alliances were formed and broken. Oli himself served multiple terms and returned to power each time through parliamentary maneuvering rather than a fresh mandate.
According to political analyst Sunil Babu Pant, what has changed now is the mandate itself. He told news agency PTI that the RSP’s victory “reflects people’s deep disappointment with the old political system and their hope for a new direction”.
The dominance of the RSP on the direct vote, and the resulting ease in the proportional vote, suggests that Nepal is moving towards a single-party government for the first time in years. Pant said whether Balen Shah can convert that mandate into stable governance is the question his country is now asking.
