KATHMANDU: Balendra “Balen” Shah, 35, is set to take oath as Nepal’s prime minister on Friday, coinciding with Ram Navami as observed in the Himalayan country. It would put one of the world’s youngest PMs in office and mark a dramatic rise for the rapper-turned-politician who forged his political career taking on Singha Durbar, the Himalayan nation's seat of power.
Shah, the former Kathmandu mayor who repeatedly clashed with Singha Durbar and cast it as the symbol of the city’s political frustrations, is now set to govern from the same complex. It's a striking turn for a politician who built his national profile by accusing the federal establishment of obstructing Kathmandu’s right to govern itself.
Few episodes captured that conflict as starkly as Shah’s Sept 2023 post after traffic police stopped a Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) vehicle carrying his wife on a public holiday and questioned its use. Shah wrote: “...if any of our KMC vehicles are stopped by the govt (in future), I will set Singha Durbar on fire.” He later deleted the post, but the remark captured the confrontational style that made him a national figure.
In September 2025, when Singha Durbar was indeed set on fire during the Gen Z uprising, the KP Sharma Oli-led govt accused KMC of not sending firefighters on time. Shah rejected that, saying KMC’s fire tenders were blocked by the mob and could move only after the situation eased.
But Shah’s clashes with Singha Durbar long predated that episode. In April 2023, he ordered KMC to stop collecting waste from Singha Durbar, saying the move followed repeated initiatives over nine months and linking it to 14 unresolved issues between the city and federal authorities, including riverbank squatters, dumping-site management and wider coordination failures.
He sharpened that row by saying that if the country really needed cleaning, the leaders inside Singha Durbar should be “dumped in Sisdol”, invoking Kathmandu’s long-contentious landfill site to turn a civic dispute into a direct insult aimed at the govt. He widened the quarrel by saying people of Kathmandu would have no objection “whether Singha Durbar is moved or even the capital is moved”, raising the larger question of who had the right to govern the city.
But his confrontations have extended beyond Singha Durbar. During the Adipurush row in June 2023 -- a dialogue in the film refers to Sita as the ''daughter of India", a reference many in Nepal protested as they believe Sita was born in that country's Janakpur -- Shah banned the screening of Indian films in Kathmandu and publicly refused to comply after Patan high court ordered the ban lifted. That defiance strengthened his image among supporters as a politician willing to take on institutions and ignore convention, while critics saw in it the same impulsiveness that could become a liability in higher office.
That is why Shah’s move to the federal complex is being seen as more than a political promotion. A prominent Nepal daily said earlier this year that Shah’s rise combined “outsider appeal”, “combative instinct” and “impulsiveness”, while warning that he had shown he could “win elections and capture imagination” but that “governing is harder”.
Another columnist put the challenge more sharply: “Ultimately, Shah’s real test will not be in his decisions, but in his perspective...Will he weaken institutions in the charm of popularity, or strengthen institutions to make his popularity enduring?”
