Opinion | How India Should Navigate A 'New' Nepal |
Opinion | How India Should Navigate A 'New' Nepal
Updated: Mar 10, 2026 17:16 pm IST Published On Mar 10, 2026 17:15 pm IST Last Updated On Mar 10, 2026 17:16 pm IST
Published On Mar 10, 2026 17:15 pm IST
Last Updated On Mar 10, 2026 17:16 pm IST
On March 5, 2026, Nepal went to the polls in a snap general election for its 275-member House of Representatives, the first electoral test after the tumultuous protests of September 2025 that forced the resignation of then Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli. The vote, held amid intense political ferment, drew roughly 60% turnout from over 18.9 million registered voters, including nearly one million first-time Gen Z voters. The verdict has been nothing short of transformative. The four-year-old Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), led by rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah - widely known as Balen - delivered a stunning performance, capturing 120 of the 165 first-past-the-post seats and emerging as the largest force in proportional representation with 49.14% of the vote. This places the party on course to command around 180 seats overall, a decisive majority.
The election simultaneously marked the collapse of Nepal's traditional political order. The once-dominant Nepali Congress was reduced to 17 seats, a fall of seventy-two from 2022, while the Communist Party of Nepal - Unified Marxist-Leninist (CPN-UML) secured only seven seats, down seventy-one. The Nepal Communist Party (NCP) also slipped to seven seats. Smaller formations such as the Shram Sanskriti Party managed three seats, while the Rastriya Prajatantra Party and a handful of independents secured single victories. The symbolism of the moment was underlined in Jhapa-5, where Shah defeated Oli himself-an outcome widely read as the........