Nepal’s newly elected parliament is sworn in months after a youth-led revolt

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Nepal’s newly elected members of parliament were sworn in Thursday with nearly two-thirds of them from a political party that is less than four years old.

The 275 members of the House of Representatives, the powerful lower chamber of parliament, will be in their positions for the next five years.

The election — the country’s first since last year’s youth-led revolt — was won by the Rastriya Swatantra Party, or RSP, led by rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah.

Shah is expected to be chosen as the leader by the elected members from his party later on Thursday and formally inform President Ram Chandra Poudel. The president will then appoint Shah as the prime minister of Nepal.

Shah is scheduled to take the oath of office on Friday.

The RSP won 125 directly elected seats plus a further 57 through proportional representation, giving it a total 182 seats in the 275-member House of Representative. The Nepali Congress party came second, with 38 seats.

In Nepal, voters directly elect 165 members to the House of Representatives. The remaining 110 seats are allocated through a proportional representation system, under which political parties are assigned seats based on their share of the vote.

Shah, who is the RSP’s prime ministerial candidate, won the 2022 Kathmandu mayoral race. He emerged as a leading figure in the 2025 uprising that ousted former Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli.

The RSP, which was founded in 2022, gained huge support in the parliamentary election, posing a strong challenge to two long-dominant parties — the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist)

Last year’s protests against corruption and poor governance were triggered by a social media ban before snowballing into a popular revolt against the government. Dozens of people were killed and hundreds more injured when protesters attacked government buildings and police opened fire on them.