From rap star to PM frontrunner, Balen Shah rises in Nepal with US backing

As vote counting continues in Nepal's pivotal 2026 general elections, early trends position 35-year-old rapper-turned-politician Balendra “Balen” Shah as the frontrunner to become the Himalayan nation’s next Prime Minister.

- ABHINANDAN MISHRA

Shah's Rastriya Swatantra Party has won 60 seats and is leading in 61 more of the 165 directly elected constituencies, with results declared in 163 seats so far, according to the latest figures released by Nepal’s Election Commission. Shah himself has been elected from Jhapa-5 after defeating former Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli by a margin of 49,614 votes. Oli was ousted last year in the Gen Z uprising that was led by Shah.

Balen’s party is projected to win 183 of 275 seats with all established parties facing near-wipeout.

The possible emergence of Shah as Prime Minister represents one of the most dramatic youth-driven transformations in Nepal's political history. The story, however, did not begin with the election results. Over the past two years, The Sunday Guardian carried a series of investigative reports that examined how American-funded democracy programmes operating inside Nepal created networks of activists and emerging political actors who would later play a central role in the country’s political upheaval. These reports, based on leaked documents, internal communications from US agencies and programme evaluation reports, described sustained American involvement in Nepal's political ecosystem. According to the reporting, institutions such as the United States Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy channelled millions of dollars into programmes designed to cultivate what programme documents described as “catalytic leaders”, building networks that later amplified protests and helped propel new political figures to national prominence.

While Washington describes such initiatives as democracy promotion programmes, the structure and scale of these interventions clearly indicated a broader geopolitical objective of countering regional influence from India and China while shaping Nepal's future political leadership.