Kathmandu, May 27 (FN Agency) Nepali rapper Balendra Shah, who has been elected as the Kathmandu Mayor is reportedly a former student from Karnataka engineering institute. Independent candidate Shah, who has an educational degree in structural engineering, garnered 61,767 votes, according to Nepal’s Election Commission statement on Thursday. Popularly known as ‘Balen’, the new mayor secured 23,426 more votes than Nepali Congress’s Sirjana Singh, who secured 38,341 votes. Kathmandu, the biggest metropolitan city, has over 300,000 eligible voters. Balen holds a master’s degree in structural engineering from the Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Karnataka, reported a Nepali daily. As per the country’s Election Commission, voter turnout in local elections held on May 13 was around 64 per cent. Besides Balen, the CPN-UML’s Sunita Dangol has won the post of deputy mayor post with 68,612 votes. Dangol defeated CPN (Unified Socialist) candidate Rameshwor Shrestha, who secured 23,806 votes.
In the local level election, a total of 35,034 people’s representatives have been elected including mayors/chairperson, deputy mayors/ vice-chairpersons, ward chairpersons and ward members. The commission had set a total of 10,756 polling stations and 21,955 centers across the country. Balen intends to start an infrastructure ambulance to keep the capital city’s infrastructure in good shape. In his manifesto, he has promised to form a greater Nepa valley cosmopolitan that features a digital government and idea bank as well as an innovation centre for innovative ideas and creative entrepreneurs. Likewise, he has said his focus will be on the development of education, sanitation and waste management along with the availability of water for all, preserving art and culture, increasing tourism and controlling pollution. He has said that people with skills will get employment rather than those with a degree.