Balen Shah sworn-in as youngest Nepal PM after massive poll victory

Kathmandu (TIP): Rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah, popularly known as Balen, took oath as the youngest Prime Minister of Nepal on Friday, March 27. The development came after the 35-year-old was elected as the Parliamentary leader of the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) on Thursday, March 26. “The Parliamentary party meeting unanimously elected Balen as its leader, formally qualifying him for the top executive post of the country,” said Shanker Shrestha, secretary of the RSP’s central organisation committee, as reported by news agency PTI.
The central committee of RSP also gave Shah the authority to form the new cabinet under his leadership, Shrestha confirmed. The members of the new cabinet are likely to be announced in the evening.
Earlier this month, the RSP, under the leadership of Shah, ensured a handsome victory in the Parliamentary elections as it secured 182 out of 275 seats in the House of Representatives (HoR). It decimated the traditional parties in the first general elections since last year’s violent Gen Z protests that sought generational change and a corruption-free regime.
Of the 275 members of the HoR, 165 are elected through direct voting and 110 through proportionate voting.
Shah, popularly known as Balen, defeated four-time prime minister K P Sharma Oli in the Jhapa-5 constituency, a long-standing stronghold of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), by a huge margin.
The newly elected members of the HoR took the oath of office at the federal parliament building, beginning the process of government formation three weeks after the voting concluded. The eldest member of the House, Arjun Narasingha KC, 78, administered the oath of office and secrecy to the newly elected lawmakers at the federal parliament secretariat in Singha Durbar.
After the completion of the oath-taking ceremony, Shah was sworn in as the Prime Minister in Sheetal Niwas (President’s House). He is likely to form a cabinet with 15–18 members.
The emergence of RSP and the landslide victory have ushered in a sea change in the politics of Nepal. The RSP wiped out traditional parties, with the Nepali Congress winning only 38 seats, followed by the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist-Leninist (CPN-UML) with 25, and the Nepali Communist Party with only 17.