RSP promised to clean up academia. Why the sudden U-turn?

The party mastered the rhetoric of depoliticisation, but its actions in higher education tell a far more cautious tale.

The Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) promised to depoliticise Nepal’s public institutions, particularly universities, by replacing existing office bearers with appointments based on transparency, merit and integrity. However, recent Vice Chancellor (VC) appointments challenge this commitment. Lower-ranked candidates under the government’s own evaluation framework were chosen over higher-ranked individuals, despite concerns regarding their professional credibility, raising serious questions about whether the selection process was genuinely merit-based. Rather than demonstrating a merit-based process, the outcome raises a broader question: Has the Government of Nepal genuinely reformed the way it selects academic leaders, or has it simply redesigned the appearance of the process?