Former rapper Balendra Shah to power in Nepal’s huge election Election news

The National Independent Party, founded just four years ago, is set to dominate the new parliament with a nearly two-thirds majority.

Official results show that a political party led by a rapper-turned-politician has won a parliamentary majority in Nepal, in one of the most dramatic elections in the country’s recent history.

The Rashtriya Swatantra Party of 35-year-old former civil engineer and hip-hop artist Balendra Shah has secured 182 seats in the 275-member parliament, the Election Commission said on Thursday, winning 125 directly and 57 through proportional representation.

Nepali Congress Party is second with 38 seats. Veteran four-time prime minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli’s Marxist party, which ousted the government in a youth-led uprising last year, won just 25 seats.

74-year-old Oli was defeated by Shah himself in his constituency.

Oli, who has dominated Nepali politics for years, congratulated his rival in X, wishing him a “smooth and successful” term.

The September 2025 protests that reshaped the country’s political landscape were initially sparked by a government ban on social media, but quickly evolved into a mass movement against corruption and economic stagnation, leaving at least 77 people dead.

Shah’s music, long targeting the same grievances, emerged as a key figure in the unrest, with his song Nepal Haseko, or Nepal Smiling, amassing more than 10 million YouTube views during the turmoil.

His path from engineer to rapper to prime minister of Kathmandu in 2022, the first independent mayor, reflects a generational shift in a country where more than 40 percent of the population of nearly 30 million is under 35, though his established party leadership remains long in the 70s.

Shah said his victory was a sign of his refusal to take the “easy way out” and a reckoning with the “issues and betrayals that have affected the country”.

The RSP, founded the same year as his mayoral victory, ran a highly organized campaign supported by diaspora funding, particularly from Nepali communities in the United States.

Nepalese journalist Pranaya Rana described Shah to Al Jazeera as “an outsider spirit that many young Nepalis are looking for to shake up the status quo”.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the vote a “proud moment” in Nepal’s democratic journey, pledging close cooperation with the incoming government.

Under Nepal’s constitutional process, parties must submit names to fill proportionally allocated seats before parliament is formally convened by the president. The new prime minister, who needs the support of at least half of the members, is not expected to be confirmed for several days.