In an unprecedented move, Nepal’s newly formed Balendra Shah government has set up a five-member judicial commission to investigate the assets of people who held public office from 2006 to the current fiscal year 2025-26, opening the widest scrutiny yet of the country’s post-monarchy political and bureaucratic elite.The move would bring under its belt former King Gyanendra Shah, three presidents, all heads of government since 2005-06, including two caretaker arrangements, and a much larger group of ministers, constitutional office holders, and senior bureaucrats.It is expected that former presidents Ram Baran Yadav and Bidya Devi Bhandari, and current president Ram Chandra Poudel, will fall under its lens. former Prime Ministers Girija Prasad Koirala, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Madhav Kumar Nepal, Jala Nath Khanal, Baburam Bhattarai, KP Sharma Oli and Sher Bahadur Deuba; The interim Prime Minister – Khilraj Regmi and Susheela Karki.
The expanded framework also draws attention to figures linked to the Shah’s political ecosystem, with the expected range said to include current Parliament Speaker Dul Prasad Aryal, ministers Birajbhakt Shrestha and Shishir Khanal, and Rastriya Swatantra Party chief Rabi Lamichhane, who has held public office in previous dispensations. The investigation is also expected to extend to the origins of deceased leaders, putting the families and heirs of political figures like Girija Prasad Koirala and Sushil Koirala under the microscope.
The five-member committee, headed by retired Supreme Court judge Rajendra Kumar Bhandari, was formed weeks after Shah’s Rastriya Swatantra Party was swept in the March 5 elections on the back of youth-led anti-graft protests last year.Cabinet spokesman Sasmit Pokhrel said the committee would investigate the assets of political and senior officials based on the law and evidence. “An impartial investigation will be conducted on the basis of evidence in accordance with legal standards…
He said that its report and recommendations will be implemented by the relevant government agencies.Under Shah’s 100-point governance reform plan, the first phase will examine those who served from 2006 to the current fiscal period, while the second phase aims to look at the period from 1991 to 2005.The Nepali Congress, the main opposition party in Parliament, said such a committee was appropriate but said the mechanism must be rooted in standing law and must not be politicized.
Spokesman Devraj Chalez said: “We are clear about the need to investigate the assets of those who have held executive positions since 1990. Instead of just setting up such a committee, legal provisions must be made. The investigation must be fair and evidence-based.”
Oli’s CPN-UML also supported the audit in principle, while insisting that the commission should work on the basis of facts and truth. Generation Z activist Rakshya Bam, 26, who was at the forefront of the September 2025 uprising that ousted the Oli government, told TOI: “We welcome the decision – our protest was, among other issues, against corruption at the top echelons of the political system. However, the real test is political will. It is known that the Deuba government set up a commission of inquiry into the monarchy in 2002, and a report was submitted in 2003.”
But my findings were never published.”
