In an unprecedented move, the newly formed Balendra Shah government in Nepal has set up a five-member judicial panel to probe 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 will bring under its lens former king Gyanendra Shah, three presidents, all heads of government since 2005-06, including two interim arrangements, and a much wider pool of ministers, constitutional office-bearers and senior bureaucrats.Those expected to come under its lens include former presidents Ram Baran Yadav and Bidya Devi Bhandari, and current president Ram Chandra Paudel; former PMs Girija Prasad Koirala, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Madhav Kumar Nepal, Jhala Nath Khanal, Baburam Bhattarai, KP Sharma Oli and Sher Bahadur Deuba; and the two interim heads of government — Khilraj Regmi and Sushila Karki.
The widening frame also cast attention on figures linked to Shah’s own political ecosystem, with the expected scope said to include current Speaker Dol Prasad Aryal, ministers Birajbhakt Shrestha and Shishir Khanal, and Rastriya Swatantra Party chief Rabi Lamichhane, who held public posts in earlier dispensations. The inquiry is also expected to extend to the assets of deceased leaders, bringing the families and political heirs of figures such as Girija Prasad Koirala and Sushil Koirala under scrutiny.The five-member commission, headed by retired Supreme Court judge Rajendra Kumar Bhandari, was formed weeks after Shah’s Rastriya Swatantra Party swept the March 5 election on the back of last year’s youth-led anti-graft protests.Cabinet spokesperson Sasmit Pokhrel said the panel would investigate the assets of political office-bearers and senior officials based on law and evidence. “An impartial investigation will be carried out based on evidence according to legal standards… Its report and recommendations will be implemented by concerned agencies of the government,” he said.Under Shah’s 100-point governance reform plan, the first phase will examine those who served from 2006 to the present fiscal, while the second phase is meant to look at the period from 1991 to 2005.Nepali Congress, the main opposition party in parliament, said such a commission was appropriate but argued that the mechanism should be rooted in permanent law and must not be politicised. “We are clear that the assets of those who held executive office since 1990 must be probed. Rather than just forming such a commission, legal provisions should be established. Investigation should be fair and evidence-based,” spokesperson Devraj Chalise said. Oli’s CPN-UML also backed scrutiny in principle, while insisting that the commission must function on facts and truth. Gen Z activist Rakshya Bam, 26, who was at the forefront of the Sept 2025 uprising that toppled the Oli government, told TOI, “We welcome the decision — our protest was, among other issues, against corruption in the upper echelons of the political system. However, the real test is political will. It’s well known that a property inquiry panel was formed by the Deuba government in 2002, and a report was submitted in 2003. Its findings, though, were never made public.”
