A recently established political party, led by a former rapper, has achieved a landslide victory in Nepal’s recent parliamentary election, according to results released by the electoral commission on Thursday. The Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), headed by Balendra Shah, emerged victorious in the election, which marked the country’s first electoral process following a youth-led uprising the previous year.
The RSP secured 125 directly elected seats and an additional 57 seats through proportional representation votes, totaling 182 seats in the 275-member House of Representatives, the influential lower house of parliament. The Nepali Congress party secured the second position with 38 seats.
In Nepal, 165 members of the House of Representatives are directly elected by the voters, while the remaining 110 seats are distributed through a proportional representation system based on the parties’ vote shares.
The commission will request political parties to nominate members to fill the proportional representation seats they have won. Subsequently, these members will be presented to the president, who will convene the new parliament. The new parliament will then elect a prime minister, who must secure the support of at least half of its members. With nearly two-thirds of the seats held by the RSP, the formation of the new government is expected to take some time.
Balendra Shah, the prime ministerial candidate for the RSP, previously won the 2022 Kathmandu mayoral race and played a significant role in the uprising that led to the removal of former Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli in 2025.
The RSP, established in 2022, garnered substantial backing in the parliamentary election, challenging the long-standing dominance of the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist—Leninist).
The protests in the previous year, triggered by a social media ban and evolving into a widespread revolt against corruption and governance issues, resulted in casualties and injuries as protesters clashed with government forces.