Kathmandu: Balendra Shah ‘Balen’, who came to the limelight after winning Kathmandu’s 2022 mayoral polls, created history on Friday by becoming the youngest prime minister of the Himalayan nation.
Balen was sworn in as the 47th prime minister days after his Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) registered a massive win in the March 5 parliamentary elections.
The 35-year-old rapper-turned-politician not just became Nepal’s youngest elected prime minister but also the first person from the Madhes region to hold the top executive post in the country.
Balen was a popular choice to lead the interim government after Gen Z youths toppled the K P Sharma Oli-led coalition government in September last year, following two-day nationwide violent protests against corruption and a ban on social media.
But he declined then to lead the interim government, saying he would rather head the government by contesting the parliamentary election for a full term.
In January, he joined the newly formed RSP, led by Ravi Lamichhane, and was soon declared the party’s prime ministerial candidate.
He defeated four-time prime minister K P Sharma Oli, the chair of Nepal’s legacy party, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) -- CPN-UML -- by a huge margin of about 50,000 votes in Jhapa-5 constituency.
As the Kathmandu Metropolitan City Mayor, Balen is credited with sweeping reform programmes and the beautification of the metropolis. In his resignation letter, Balen said, as the Mayor of Kathmandu, “I have performed my duty in an honest manner as far as possible for the welfare of the metropolis and its inhabitants.”
Born in Kathmandu in a family originally from Madhes province, Balen is the youngest son of Ram Narayan Shah, an Ayurved practitioner, and Dhruvadevi Shah, a homemaker. He was keen on music and poetry from a young age and turned to rap music during his education days.