Days after winning the election in Nepal, rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah ‘Balen,’ took oath as Nepal’s democratically elected prime minister on Friday, around six months after the K P Sharma Oli-led government was ousted in a Gen-Z protest that shook the nation. The 35-year-old Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) leader was sworn in at a ceremony at the President’s Office in Sheetal Niwas at the auspicious time of 12.34 pm.
Balen, also an engineer, is the youngest person to assume the office in the Himalayan nation, and also the first person from the Madhes region to hold the top executive post. He was appointed as the 47th prime minister by President Ram Chandra Paudel in accordance with Article 76 (1) of the constitution earlier in the day.
A unique blend of Hindu and Buddhist religious tradition featured during Balens’ swearing-in ceremony. The ceremony will comprise elaborate religious rituals including Shankhanad (conch blowing) by seven brahmins, recitation of Vedic hymns or Swasti Bachan by 108 Hindu Batuks or young brahmins and Mangal Bachan or recitation of Buddhist scripture by 107 Lamas, according to sources close to Balen.
He is likely to form a small cabinet with the number of ministers ranging between 15 to 18, the sources added. Nepal chose former Kathmandu mayor and fresher Balendra Shah ‘Balen’ โ popular only as Balen โ and his RSP to form the next government decimating the traditional parties in the first general elections since last year’s violent Gen Z protests that sought generational change and corruption-free regime.
The RSP that had projected Balen as the prime ministerial candidate, secured a massive 182 seats out of a total 275 seats in the House of Representatives (HoR), making it eligible to form a majority government under Article 76 (1) of the Constitution. Of the 275 members of the HoR, 165 are elected through direct voting and 110 through proportionate voting. On Thursday, all the newly elected members of the HoR took oath.
Balen, the former Kathmandu mayor, defeated four-time prime minister K P Sharma Oli in the Jhapa-5 constituency, a long-standing stronghold of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), by a huge margin.
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