RSP heads for landslide victory in Nepal; rapper Balen set to be PM

7 MARCH 2026

Balendra Shah, 35, the rapper-turned-politician, handed a humiliating defeat to former Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli in Jhapa-5, the latter’s home constituency, with a margin of 49,614.
This was a constituency where the CPN-UML leader had won six of the seven elections held since 1990.
Mr. Shah, popularly known as Balen, is set to become Nepal’s next Prime Minister, as his party, the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), heads for a landslide victory in the first election since 2025 Gen Z protests that toppled the Oli government.
RSP has won seats out of 165 constituencies.
RSP chief Rabi Lamichhane also won his third consecutive win since 2022, the year he founded the party and contested his first election.
The RSP is also ahead in the proportional representation (PR) count.
Balen, who won the Kathmandu mayoral election in the 2022 local polls as an independent candidate, joined the RSP only in December 2025, three months after the Gen Z protests.
Voter turnout stood at 58.7%, the lowest since Nepal’s first election in 1991, a year after democracy was restored in the country.
Some see it as voter fatigue, but analysts say the low turnout also indicates that many old-party loyalists stayed home, frustrated by repeated failures.