KATHMANDU: Counting was underway in Nepal on Friday (Mar 6), after a high-stakes parliamentary election to reshape the country’s leadership following 2025 protests that toppled the government.
Key figures vying for power include Marxist leader KP Sharma Oli, the ousted four-time prime minister, rapper-turned-mayor Balendra Shah, bidding for the youth vote, and the newly elected leader of the Nepali Congress party, Gagan Thapa.
In Kathmandu’s tea shops and city squares, people were glued to their phones, checking results as early trends flashed up – suggesting Shah’s centrist Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) was ahead.
Prakash Nyupane, a spokesman for the Election Commission, said that counting was ongoing “in a peaceful manner” across the Himalayan nation, from snowbound high-altitude mountain regions to the hot plains bordering India.
Voters have chosen who replaces the interim government in place since the September 2025 uprising, in which at least 77 people were killed, and parliament and scores of government buildings were torched.
Youth-led protests under a loose Gen Z banner began as a demonstration against a brief social media ban, but were fed by wider grievances at corruption and a woeful economy.
“This is even a bigger upset than we expected – it underscores the level of public disenchantment with the old parties for under-performance, as well as anger over the events of September,” Kunda Dixit, publisher of the weekly Nepali Times, told AFP.
“FATE OF THE COUNTRY”
The polls are one of the most hotly contested elections in the Himalayan republic of 30 million people since the end of a civil war in 2006.
All eyes are watching the results in the key head-to-head battleground constituency of Jhapa-5, a usually sleepy eastern district, where 35-year-old Shah challenged directly the veteran Oli, aged 74.
Shah, better known as Balen, snappily dressed in a black suit and sunglasses, has cast himself as a symbol of youth-driven political change – and early trends suggested he was in the lead.
Soldiers with armoured trucks manned barbed wire barricades around the counting centre in Jhapa.
“I hope this result changes the fate of the country for the better,” Bhagawati Adhikari, 38, told AFP, who was among a crowd of dozens at Jhapa gathered outside the security cordon.
“The country should be peaceful and secure, youth should get opportunities, corruption should stop – that’s my appeal.”
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