Nepal’s youngest prime minister takes oath of office

Nepal’s youngest prime minister has taken the oath of office after his party’s landslide election victory earlier this month, following a youth-led uprising that toppled the government in September.

Balendra Shah was appointed prime minister by the country’s president Ram Chandra Paudel after his Rastriya Swatantra Party won nearly two-thirds of the seats in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of parliament, in the March 5 polls.

Mr Shah, the 35-year-old political outsider widely known as Balen, will lead a government tasked with navigating deep public frustration with Nepal’s established parties, who were widely blamed by voters for corruption and chronic political instability.

The elaborate swearing-in ceremony was to include Hindu rituals, such as the “shankhnaad”, or blowing of conches, and religious chanting by Hindu priests and Buddhist lamas.

The timing of Mr Shah’s oath taking – at 12.34pm on the day when the Himalayan nation is celebrating Ram Navami – was seen as an auspicious time by Hindu priests based on astrological calculations.

It also fits the “1-2-3-4” numerological pattern. Mr Shah is later scheduled to enter his new office at 14.15pm, which also fits a “14-15” pattern. Hindu priests consider such numerical patterns as auspicious as well.

Religion and astrology play a big role in Nepal, which is more than 80% Hindu and where people begin new work, get married and hold religious rituals according to auspicious times.

Mr Shah was born in the capital Kathmandu but his family comes from the Hindu-dominated Terai region of Nepal, near the border with India.

A structural engineer who rose to fame as a rap artist before becoming Kathmandu’s mayor, he leads the Rastriya Swatantra Party, which won about two-thirds of the 275 seats in the bicameral Parliament’s powerful lower House of Representatives.

Mr Shah emerged as a prominent voice during the bloody youth-led uprising in September that toppled the government in the nation of 30 million people, a wave of unrest that left dozens dead.

Although he did not directly participate in the protests, Mr Shah publicly expressed support for the largely Generation Z demonstrators who led the movement.