Nepal: Rastriya Swatantra Party on track to sweep polls

The newly-formed Rastriya Swatantra Party was on its way to sweep the parliamentary elections in Nepal as votes continued to be counted on Saturday.

As of 6.45 pm, the three-year-old party was leading in 60 seats and had won 62 seats, according to The Kathmandu Post.

Polling to elect 275 members of Parliament in the country took place on Thursday. A voter turnout of 58% was recorded.

Of the total, 165 seats are being decided through direct voting. The remaining will be allocated under the proportional representation system, with political parties nominating lawmakers based on the share of votes the parties get.

The Nepali Congress was ahead in 10 seats and had won 10 others.

Rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah, who has been positioned as the Rastriya Swatantra Party’s prime ministerial candidate, defeated ousted Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli by more than 49,600 votes in the Jhapa-5 constituency.

Shah, 35, is the former mayor of Kathmandu.

Oli’s Communist Party of ​Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) was leading in seven seats and had won three.

Nepali Communist Party leader and former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, widely known as Prachanda, won the Rukum East-1 seat, The Kathmandu Post reported. His party was leading in six seats and had won two.

Election Commission officials had said that declaring the final result could take ​a week, as ⁠counting of proportional representation votes would take some time.

This was the first general election in Nepal after the widespread protests in September that toppled the Oli government.

The crisis that led to Oli’s ouster had begun following protests sparked by Nepal’s ban on 26 social media platforms on September 4.

Although the Oli government lifted the social media ban on September 8, the agitation snowballed into a broader protest against alleged corruption and misgovernance. A day later, Oli resigned from his post.

At least 72 persons were killed in the protests.

The demonstrations were described as a protest mainly by “Gen Z”, generally referring to persons born between the late 1990s and 2010.

On September 12, Sushila Karki, a former chief justice, was appointed interim prime minister until a new government was formed.

On Thursday, more than 3,400 candidates ⁠from 65 parties contested the general election.

Also read:

• Nepal: After Gen Z uprising, youth hope that elections will usher in a new, united politics

• Nepal’s election is referendum on its future and democracy in South Asia