With less than 48 hours to go for voting to commence in Nepal’s election, some of the buzz in Kathmandu has centered around a BBC documentary that claims to provide a “forensic” analysis of the GenZ uprising of September 2025.
The documentary focuses on the families of some of the 19 youth killed in apparent police firing during the uprising. Using leaked government documents including recordings of police wireless communication, it tries to pinpoint who gave the order to fire on the protesting youth.
It names two senior police officers, both of whom have denied giving orders to shoot on the crowds. A shadowy committee is also named but here too the evidence is not clear. Presumably, an official inquiry underway will provide a better picture as to what happened.
The other buzz centres around the timing of release of the documentary: so close to the election. The implication being that it is intended to help better the chances of Balen Shah of the Rashtriya Swatantra Party (RSP), who appears to be on a roll with the backing of GenZ voters.
Balen Shah remains a figure of some mystery. He says little at his rallies, is not liberal with interviews and is on record as saying he will do whatever GenZ wants of him: the decision to contest from Jhapa-5, former prime minister KP Sharma Oli’s constituency, was reportedly pushed by the GenZ circle around him.
NepalNews.com carried a long article listing his development plans for Jhapa-5, which covered education, infrastructure, health, education and so on. The constituency is among the better developed in Nepal given that it has elected Oli four times so far.
If the constituents decide to dump him this time, it may reflect the anger among GenZ voters fed up with what they see as the corruption and incompetence that has characterised the governance of leaders such as Oli.
A word about security. Campaigning ended last night and while there were fears of violence, nothing of note happened. But the Nepal Army brass had one concern:
“Of 2000 weapons taken during the GenZ uprising, around 80% has been returned but more than 100 small arms (pistols) are still missing,” Maj Gen Binod Basnayat (Retd), told StratNewsGlobal in Kathmandu.
Could these be used to try and assassinate political rivals? Could polling stations be attacked? Who is in possession of these weapons?
The army does not know and its other concern centres on the demoralisation among the police since the GenZ uprising. Rank and file policemen, junior officers feel they were abandoned by seniors during the worst phase of the uprising.
The morale and effectiveness of the force needs to be restored, more so its ability to gather and generate intelligence. The sense is the uprising caught the force by surprise, which in turn diminished their effectiveness and ability to respond.
The uprising underscored a major point: when everything else had collapsed, the army remained the sole institution that was trusted and could be relied upon to do the right thing. In fact, Balen Shah is known to have had a good equation with Gen Prabhu Ram Sharma, who was the chief during the uprising and retired as army chief recently.
“The army has no political ambitions”, Gen Basnayat said, “but wants to have a say in the new government to ensure its concerns are made known. The army traditionally has had good ties with the mayor of Kathmandu and that relationship will probably continue if Balen transitions to Baluwatar, the prime minister’s residence.”
