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Kathmandu: Sweeping into office on a wave of generational discontent that marks a sharp break from mainstream politics, Nepal’s youngest prime minister, 35-year-old Balendra Shah, has aggressively signalled a new order in his first week. Shah has arrested former prime minister K.P. Sharma Oli and former home minister Ramesh Lekhak, and opened money laundering investigations into three former prime ministers.

Shah’s Rastriya Swatantra Party emerged from the March 5 elections as the largest party with 182 seats in the 275-member house, significantly weakening the traditional parties. The RSP had fought the election on a platform of accountability, good governance, the fight against corruption and job creation, riding the political vacuum left by the Gen Z uprising of September 2025, in which at least 76 people were killed across two days of unrest.

Sworn in on March 27, Shah convened his first cabinet meeting that same evening and moved to implement the report of the probe commission formed to investigate the September 8-9 violence. The commission, chaired by former Special Court judge Gauri Bahadur Karki and set up by the preceding interim government under Sushila Karki, had recommended criminal charges against Oli and Lekhak under Sections 181 and 182 of the National Penal Code for criminal negligence causing death.

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