Kathmandu, March 30 -- In the general elections held on March 5, the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) bagged a staggering 182 seats in the 275-member House of Representatives. The RSP's landslide victory is reminiscent of the two-thirds majority achieved by the Nepali Congress in 1959, when it won 74 out of 109 seats in the first parliamentary elections in Nepal.

Since the restoration of democracy in 1990, across seven subsequent electoral cycles, no single political force had ever managed to garner such an overwhelming number of seats in the legislature. Consequently, a new government has been formed under the leadership of RSP senior leader Balendra Shah, notably without the need of support from any political party.

While the RSP celebr...