KATHMANDU, MAY 26
Balen Shah has won the Kathmandu Metropolitan City mayoral race with 61,767 votes, whereas his closest rivals Srijana Singh and Keshav Sthapit garnered 38,341 and 38,117 votes respectively.
After two weeks of vote counting, independent candidate Balen Shah registered a historical win defeating the major political parties the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML.
The Election commission will officially provide a certificate to Balen tomorrow morning.
UML candidate, Sunita Dangol won the deputy mayoral race with 68,612 votes, whereas her closest rival Rameshwor Shrestha received 23,806 votes.
The election result was announced today, though it was certain that Balen was going to win from the way he led the race. His closest rivals Srijana Singh and Keshav Sthapit were way behind.
The rapper-cum-structural engineer will now lead the country's biggest metropolitan city with the highest budget (Rs 18.9 billion for the current fiscal year) among the 753 local levels.
Yesterday afternoon, Balen's team thanked the electorate through a Facebook post saying the voters of KMC had shown they trusted that he could shoulder the responsibility of the city. His team urged voters and supporters not to take out any victory rally, but added they would jointly celebrate when the promises in the manifesto were converted into reality.
In Dang, people celebrated his win.
Things are not easy for Balen though. As soon as the structural engineer assumes office, he inherits a heap of problems plaguing the city.
The list of what needs to be done in Kathmandu is endless.
Balen's family and his team members said people trusted him because he made deliverable pledges that connected to people's day to day lives, unlike other candidates who promised the impossible.
His election manifesto lists his commitments under 28 topics covering education, health, transportation, pollution control, digital government and corruption control. Improvements of infrastructure of public schools and quality of education, auditing of private schools, setting up health clinics in every ward, free screening for breast and cervical cancer and improvement of public transportation are some of his promises.
The ruling alliance led by the Nepali Congress has won the mayoral race in five metropolitan cities - Pokhara, Bharatpur, Birgunj, Biratanagar, Lalitpur, and Biratnagar.
The Nepali Congress has won mayoral contest in 327 rural municipalities/municipalities, followed by UML (205), CPN-MC (121), Janata Samajbadi Party-Nepal (30), and CPN (US) (20).
A version of this article appears in the print on May 27, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
