Making sense of the political tsunami in Nepal

As a landlocked country, Nepal has gone through both geological and political earthquakes in recent years, but the snap election held on March 5 has been nothing short of a political tsunami. The old political parties have barely scraped through and the Rashtriya Swatantra Party (RSP), which is less than five years old, has won 125 seats out of the 165 first-past-the-post (FPTP) seats; with 57 proportional representation (PR) seats, it has a total tally of 182, just two short of the two-thirds mark, an unprecedented outcome in a Nepali election. Most of the political leaders who have dominated the Kathmandu scene for the last quarter century will be missing when the new House is convened. However, the RSP leaders now face a bigger challenge — of converting a stable majority into institution-based policy formulation and a good governance team to deliver on the high expectations generated.

Crisis after crisis

Barely had the 21st century begun when Nepal went through its first major political crisis. On June 1, 2001, at a family dinner at the Narayanhiti Palace, Crown Prince Dipendra killed nine members of the royal family, including his father, King Birendra, and his mother, Queen Aishwarya. As Nepal mourned, he died three days later as a result of a self-inflicted gun wound. King Gyanendra took over, marking a turning point for the two-century-old Shah dynasty.

Meanwhile, Nepal was also struggling with a Maoist insurgency that finally ended by 2006 with the political mainstreaming of the Maoists. In the Terai, the Madhesi movement had gained momentum, backing demand for a federal structure. During his seven years, King Gyanendra changed Prime-Ministers six times and even abolished the National Assembly to impose direct rule. However, the political parties were able to lead a Jan Aandolan that forced him to retreat.

A Constituent Assembly (CA) was elected in 2008 that voted to abolish the monarchy, marking Nepal’s second major political change. The CA’s mandate was to draft a constitution for a federal democratic Nepal in two years. The process turned out to be politically difficult and took considerably longer. After another CA election mandated by the Supreme Court in 2013, a new Constitution was finally adopted in 2015. These seven years saw six Prime Ministers. The reason was simple. Both the 2008 and the 2013 elections failed to throw up clear majorities, and the leaders of the political parties — Nepali Congress (NC), Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist Leninist (UML), Maoists and the Madhesi parties — devoted their time to jockeying for positions in the coalition governments.

The 2015 Constitution marked Nepal’s third political turning point but the expectations of the much-awaited dawn of a naya Nepal were soon belied. From 2015 to 2025, Nepal saw seven Prime Ministers but the faces were the same —UML leader K P Sharma Oli thrice, NC leader Sher Bahadur Deuba twice, and Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda twice.

The lavish lifestyles of the political elite went viral on social media, accompanied by tales of corruption and impunity of “nepo-babies”. The disconnect between a young Nepal with a median age of 26 and a self-absorbed political leadership in its seventies, was combustible. The spark came when the Oli government banned 26 social media websites (including Facebook, X, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Signal, YouTube, and Instagram) on September 4 for failing to comply with domestic regulations. Resentment erupted as Gen Z protests on September 8-9, leading to widespread looting and arson across Nepal. With 77 deaths due to police firings, Prime Minister Oli was forced to resign.

Former Chief Justice Sushila Karki was sworn in on September 12 to head an interim government. According to the Constitution, an interim leader should have been from the Assembly but given the anger against all the political parties, President Ram Chandra Poudel’s choice was guided by public sentiment. Ms. Karki made it clear that her goal was to ensure inclusive and peaceful elections within six months and she has delivered on her promise by bringing Nepal back on the constitutional path.

Message of the 2026 election

The Gen Z protests brought down the Oli government. The decimation of the old political forces in the 2026 elections mark 21st century Nepal’s fourth political transformational moment. Beginning 2008, when Nepal introduced PR seats along with the FPTP ones to ensure a more balanced political representation, none of the last four elections (in 2008, 2013, 2017 and 2022) saw any political party manage a clear majority. Most Nepali observers had blamed the PR system for political instability and unwieldy coalitions. However, the RSP’s victory puts that myth to rest.

The number of MPs under 40 has gone up to 61 out of 165 FPTP members, and 52 are from the RSP. The NC has slipped from 89 seats in 2022 to 18 and UML from 78 to nine. Both parties had seen calls for leadership changes after the Gen Z protests. In the UML, K.P. Sharma Oli managed to stave it off leading to his ignominious defeat in his home constituency that he had represented since 1991, by 35-year-old Balendra (Balen) Shah, a former Mayor of Kathmandu, fighting his first Assembly election. The NC managed an organisational reshuffle with 51-year-old Gagan Thapa easing out 79-year-old five-time PM Sher Bahadur Deuba but it happened too late to improve the NC’s prospects. All the pro-Monarchy and Madhes parties have been wiped out. Evidently, identity politics (Madhes/Pahad, Khas Arya/Janjati, secularism/Hindu rashtra) was not a factor in 2026.

The credit for RSP’s victory goes to its founder chairman, Rabi Lamichhane, and Mr. Shah who joined the party in December-end on the understanding that while Mr. Lamichhane would continue as the party chairman, he (Balen) would be the party candidate for PM. He, together with the party symbol ghanti, became the face of the RSP campaign. It was a politically sound decision because Mr. Lamichhane’s short stint in government, following the 2022 elections, as Deputy PM was marked by controversies. The first was on account of the fact that he had not renounced his U.S. citizenship, and the second is an ongoing criminal case regarding financial embezzlement from a number of cooperative societies. But such was the pro-RSP wave that out of its tally of 125, 42 MPs are those who defected from other parties less than eight weeks before the elections.

Success raises its own challenges. The RSP spelt out ambitious targets in its manifesto — ensuring 7% annual growth, doubling the per capita income to $3000 and GDP to $100 billion, creating 1.2 million formal jobs to curb the daily youth migration running at 3,300, delivering universal health insurance and integrated social security, and reforming public education.

Among the promised administrative and political reforms are reducing the number of Ministries from 25 to 18, bringing in experts as Ministers so that MPs only exercise oversight, a merit-based bureaucracy and judiciary, a review of assets of all public officials since 1990, and constitutional amendments for a directly elected Executive with a fully PR parliament. Mr. Lamichhane and Mr. Balen will have to show that they can work together to prioritise elements from this list and put together a core team that can deliver.

Managing external relations

On the foreign policy front, establishing ground rules for relations with India, China and the U.S. will be another challenge. As Mayor of Kathmandu, Mr. Shah has been temperamental and kept aloof from media, relying instead on his social media outreach. In a country with a population of 30 million, he enjoys a following of 3.7 million on Facebook and a million on Instagram. Even during the election campaign, he spoke at only five events, for a total of 27 minutes. He is a Madhesi by birth, speaks Maithili but did not exploit it. His messaging does not rely on speeches and TV interviews but social media.

His outbursts can be mercurial; last November his Facebook post, “F…America F…India F…China F…UML F…congress F…RSP F…RPP F…Maobaadi You Guys all Combined can do Nothing (Smiley),” generated criticism before he deleted it. In 2023, in response to the unveiling of the mural of Akhand Bharat in India’s new parliament building, he put up a map of Greater Nepal in his office that showed parts of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and West Bengal as part of Nepal. He declared that “India called its parliamentary map a cultural one, so we put up a historical map of Greater Nepal. No one should object”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken to Mr. Shah and Mr. Lamichhane to congratulate them and both sides have conveyed their intention to strengthen and deepen bilateral relations. Mr. Lamichhane has talked of Nepal pursuing the path of “development diplomacy”. Given the changes in Nepal, India will need to be careful about reiterating the old mantras of cultural, historical and religious ties and invoking tropes of Ayodhya-Janakpur, Kashi-Pashupatinath, and roti-beti ka rishta; it should now invest in developing a new idiom of responding to the naya Nepal.

Rakesh Sood is a former diplomat and is currently Distinguished Fellow at the Council For Strategic and Defence Research. Views expressed are personal