A newly formed political party led by a former rap artist has emerged victorious in Nepal’s recent parliamentary elections, according to results released by the electoral commission on Thursday. The Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), headed by Balendra Shah, secured a significant win in the country’s first election following a youth-led uprising last year.
The RSP secured 125 directly elected seats and an additional 57 through proportional representation votes, totaling 182 seats in the 275-member House of Representatives, the influential lower house of parliament. The Nepali Congress party came in second with 38 seats.
In Nepal, 165 members of the House of Representatives are directly elected by voters, while the remaining 110 seats are distributed through a proportional representation system based on the parties’ vote percentages.
The commission will request the political parties to nominate members to fill the proportional representation seats they have won. These members will then be submitted to the president, who will convene the new parliament for the election of a prime minister, requiring the support of at least half of the members. The RSP currently holds nearly two-thirds of the seats in parliament.
The process of forming a new government is expected to take several days before completion. Shah, the prime ministerial candidate of the RSP, previously won the 2022 Kathmandu mayoral election and played a significant role in the 2025 uprising that led to the removal of former Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli.
Established in 2022, the RSP garnered substantial support in the parliamentary election, challenging the longstanding dominance of the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist—Leninist). The protests last year, triggered by a social media ban, escalated into a widespread revolt against the government, resulting in casualties and injuries as protesters clashed with authorities.