From prison to four terms of prime minister, Oli’s career traced Nepal’s democratic contradictions — and, in the end, its limits.
Voluble, sharp-tongued, and self-centered to the point of hubris.
That’s how some describe KP Sharma Oli. Others see a leader with genuine mettle — a nationalist who cared about the country when few others would say so plainly.
The 74-year-old politician is probably Nepal’s most divisive figure of the post-2015 constitutional era. Few careers in modern Nepali politics contain so many reversals, so many reinventions, and so persistent a refusal to be finished.
From Jhapa to Kathmandu, from a marginalised figure to four-time prime minister, Oli’s journey is marked by jail terms, ailments, revolts, and unrelenting audacity. It is also a story about what happens when a political system built on coalition and compromise encounters a man constitutionally incapable of either.
Oli’s political journey reflects a broader tension in Nepal’s democratic experiment: between revolutionary origins and institutional governance, between populist certainty and constitutional restraint. Over five decades, he has moved from underground communist activism to the centre of state power, repeatedly reshaping both his ideology and the political system around his personal authority.
Until September last year, he was the most powerful person in the country, leading a government with the backing of the then-largest party, Nepali Congress. Less than a year later, his own party members are considering ousting him, and he is on the verge of being pushed into obscurity.
To understand how Oli got here, you have to start last year. September 9, 2025. Around noon. Demonstrators had already stormed the Prime Minister’s official residence in Baluwatar. A day earlier, 19 people, mostly young, had been killed in police firing.
Oli was surrounded by security forces and party office bearers. Witnesses recall him maintaining an almost eerie calm, even as Baluwatar burned around him. Fires raged in the Supreme Court, Parliament, Singha Durbar, the presidential house, and other buildings. Smoke and chaos had become the city’s soundtrack.
“What’s the political solution [of the current crisis] once I resign?” he asked.
Finance minister Bishnu Poudel, his chief advisor Bishnu Rimal, and party Deputy General Secretary Pradeep Gyawali pressed him insistently.
“I am not going to bow down before the wrongs. I will rather die here if they kill me,” he declared.
As the situation spiraled beyond control, he agreed to resign. He asked for official letterhead of the Prime Minister’s Office, but there was none. So he scrawled his resignation on plain paper:
“…I resign effective today’s date to pave the way for a political resolution through constitutional means…,” he wrote.
Rumors about his whereabouts swirled. Some said the Nepal Army had taken him to Shivapuri barracks; others suggested the Army Headquarters. It was later confirmed that a Nepal Army helicopter had airlifted him and his wife, Radhika Shakya, to Chitlang barracks.
For ten days, Oli vanished from public view — the longest stretch of silence in his recent political career. He gave no statements, there were no newspaper quotes, and he didn’t make a single media appearance.
Then, on September 18, he resurfaced in Gundu, Bhaktapur. His house in Balkot had been reduced to ashes during the September 9 demonstrations. Mahesh Basnet, his loyal and at times bellicose right-hand man, had arranged for his accommodation.
He remained adamant: the September 8 Gen Z protest was a conspiracy, and the destruction that followed was a calculated outcome. The uprising, fuelled by his refusal to compromise, had escalated from a peaceful demonstration into a nationwide demand for accountability, generational change, and clean governance. The immediate trigger had been his government’s decision to ban 26 social media platforms, including Facebook, X, and WhatsApp.
The fallout was swift. The new government, led by Sushila Karki, called elections for March 5. Oli’s party suffered a historic defeat. He himself lost in his home constituency of Jhapa-5 to Balendra Shah by nearly 50,000 votes.
In an interview with Kantipur shortly after, he placed the blame squarely on the voters. “People have made a big mistake by not voting for the UML,” he said.
