How the Left veered right in Nepal

FEW HAVE NEGOTIATED Nepal’s politics as craftily or laid claim to a constituency as unyieldingly as Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli has. A former prime minister and the head of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), or CPN-UML, Oli has been elected from Jhapa district in eastern Nepal in all but one general election since 1991, when Nepal returned to multi-party democracy. His favoured stomping ground throughout has been what is now the Jhapa-5 constituency, formed in 2017 from parts of earlier constituencies where he had found favour. In the last general election in 2022, his margin of victory was more than 28,000 votes in a constituency where some 100,000 people cast ballots. Unlike many other aspirants, Oli did not have to pursue a door-to-door campaign. As the face of one of Nepal’s grand old parties for the past decade, and already by then a two-time prime minister, he addressed voters at mega-rallies and campaign gatherings. Oli didn’t go to voters; they came to him. Until now. 

Nepal goes to the polls on 5 March for a snap election called after mass protests in September 2025 brought down an Oli-led government. Defying loud calls to relinquish party leadership and step aside for a new crop of leaders, he is contesting Jhapa-5 again. His primary competitor is Balendra Shah, the former rapper-turned-mayor of Kathmandu and now the projected prime ministerial candidate of the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP). Shah and the RSP stormed onto the scene in 2022: Shah won a mayoral election as an unheralded independent and the RSP became the fourth-largest party in parliament just half a year after its formation, both tapping into popular anger against a corrupt and dysfunctional political establishment. Shah’s decision to fight Oli on his home turf has turned the contest in Jhapa-5 into the most symbolic and most closely watched of the 2026 election.