Prabhu Sah, chairman of the Aam Janata Party (AJP) and a former minister, has publicly accused the core team of the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) of conspiring to make Prime Minister Balendra Shah fail, alleging that the plot was woven less than six months after the present government was formed. Sah levelled the charge while speaking at a programme in Rautahat, and his remarks were carried by multiple Nepali news outlets on October 23, 2026, including Ratopati, Nagarik News and Pradesh Khabar.
"A plot is being hatched to make Balen a failure"
Sah did not frame his warning in vague terms. Speaking in Rautahat, the AJP chairman alleged that the RSP core team was actively working against the prime minister, a claim reflected in the headlines of the reports themselves: Nagarik News carried his charge under the banner "A plot is being hatched to make Balen a failure - Prabhu Sah," while Ratopati's report was titled "RSP core team is conspiring to defeat the prime minister - Prabhu Sah."
According to the reports, Sah said the conspiracy was not a recent development. In his telling, the plot had been woven less than six months after the government was formed, and its purpose was unambiguous: to displace Prime Minister Balendra Shah from office. By placing the timeline at the very start of the government's tenure, Sah's allegation suggests that efforts to undermine the prime minister began almost as soon as he assumed power, rather than emerging from later political friction.
What Sah alleged
Drawing together the key elements of the AJP chairman's statement as reported on October 23:
- Who is accused: the core team of the Rastriya Swatantra Party, rather than the party's broader rank and file or any named individual.
- What is alleged: an organised conspiracy, described by Sah as a plot designed to make the prime minister fail.
- The timeline: the plot was allegedly put in motion within six months of the government's formation.
- The objective: displacing Prime Minister Balendra Shah.
The reports published on October 23 did not indicate that Sah named specific members of the RSP core team or presented documentary evidence to support the claim. The available reporting centres on the allegation itself, delivered publicly from a political stage in Rautahat, a district in the Madhesh Province lowlands.
An allegation pointed inward
What makes the charge politically charged is its target. Accusations of scheming against a sitting prime minister are common in competitive politics when directed at opposition parties. Sah, however, directed his fire at the core team of the RSP, the very circle associated with the leadership of Prime Minister Balendra Shah, whom the outlets' headlines refer to simply as "Balen."
In effect, Sah's remarks amount to a public warning in the prime minister's favour: that the danger to the government, as he sees it, lies not outside the governing camp but within it. Framing the alleged plot as an internal one raises pointed questions about cohesion at the top of the political arrangement that brought Shah to office, and about whether the people entrusted with the government's success are, in Sah's view, working toward a different end.
The choice of venue is also noteworthy. Rautahat, in the plains of Madhesh, is far from the capital's political circles, yet it was from there that Sah chose to air an accusation that goes to the heart of the government's internal stability. Public allegations of this kind, delivered outside Kathmandu, often signal an attempt to pressure a party's leadership by taking the argument directly to the public.
What the reports leave unanswered
For all its severity, the allegation leaves much unspecified. The reporting of October 23, 2026 does not identify which members of the RSP core team Sah believes are involved, what form the alleged plotting has taken, or what evidence, if any, he offered for a conspiracy that he says has been running since the government's early months. Nor do the reports indicate that the RSP had responded to the accusation by the time of publication.
That silence leaves several questions open: Will the RSP core team issue a formal rebuttal? Will Sah elaborate on the basis for his claim? And will other figures in the government or the Aam Janata Party echo or distance themselves from his remarks? Until then, the allegation stands as a one-sided charge, though a striking one, given that it comes from the chairman of a party and a former minister rather than from an opposition critic.
A test for the government's early tenure
Sah's remarks arrive with the government still in its formative period by his own account of the timeline. If a plot to unseat the prime minister was indeed woven within six months of the government's formation, as he asserts, the dispute over it has now been pushed into the open by one of the government's own political voices.
For Prime Minister Balendra Shah, the accusation creates an unwelcome dynamic regardless of its eventual resolution. Either the internal plot Sah describes is real, in which case the government faces a credibility problem at its centre, or the charge is unfounded, in which case the prime minister's camp must manage a public allegation of internal treachery made by an allied party chairman and former minister. The reports filed by Ratopati, Nagarik News and Pradesh Khabar on October 23 ensure that the claim, first voiced in Rautahat, will now circulate well beyond it.
The original reports are available via Ratopati, Nagarik News and Pradesh Khabar.
Readers can expect the story to develop if the RSP core team responds to Sah's charge, or if the AJP chairman follows up with specifics about the alleged conspiracy he says began within six months of the government's formation. Until then, his October 23 statement stands as a direct public warning that the most serious threat to Prime Minister Balendra Shah, in his assessment, comes from within.
