Nepal began a new political era as ex-Chief Justice Sushila Karki took the oath as the nation’s temporary Prime Minister tonight. The ceremony held at the presidential palace in Shital Niwas and will be followed by an immediate meeting of her new cabinet.
#WATCH | Nepal | Prime Minister’s Office in Kathmandu being prepared for the new PM pic.twitter.com/FGQVzEWZEJ
— ANI (@ANI) September 12, 2025
The historic decision is a consensus answer to political unrest that has engulfed the country, reaching its peak with the resignation of ousted Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli.
From Chief Justice To Interim PM
Sushila Karki, 73, is no career politician but a veteran jurist. She is most widely recognized for her role as Nepal’s first female chief justice between July 2016 and June 2017, an era marked by her tough anti-corruption stance. Her image as a clean and honest figure has earned her immense popularity to head the new government, especially among the youth-led “Gen Z” protest movement that has called for clean governance.
Her appointment has been compared to Nobel winner Muhammad Yunus, who was appointed to head Bangladesh’s interim administration last year after a student-led uprising.
Consensus Reached Amidst Unrest
The appointment of Karki was agreed upon after days of violent and sometimes militant protests. A compromise has been reached between President Ramchandra Paudel, members of the “Gen Z” protest movement, and Nepal Army head General Ashok Raj Sigdel, sources told AFP.
The recent protests, which erupted over a ban on social media, turned into a mass movement against corruption and bad governance. Police confirmed that at least 51 were dead and more than 1,300 injured following clashes between security personnel and protesters who defied curfews. Though soldiers were withdrawn from Kathmandu streets on Friday, police kept watch with batons rather than rifles as some areas of the capital started to reopen.
A Life of Law and Controversy
Born in 1952, Karki’s legal career began in 1979. She was appointed to the Supreme Court as a temporary judge in 2009 and was confirmed a year later. Her rise to the top post in July 2016 was celebrated, but her anti-corruption crusade quickly created political friction.
In April 2017, she was met with an impeachment motion by legislators, who blamed her for bias in a ruling that disqualified the chairman of a notorious anti-corruption watchdog. This action saw her suspended, but public demonstrations and an intervention by the Supreme Court saw the motion withdrawn. She was reinstated to her position before retiring a month later. While in office, she heard a number of precedence-setting cases, one of which was the conviction of a serving minister on a corruption charge.
The India Connection
Sushila Karki’s education and personal life have strong roots in India. She earned her master’s in political science from Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in 1975, where she married her husband, Durga Prasad Subedi.
Mr. Subedi was a young leader of the Nepali Congress and was party to a sensational incident in 1973: the hijacking of a national Nepal Airlines flight. The aircraft, containing a significant amount of money from Nepal’s state bank, had been hijacked and made to land at Forbesganj, Bihar. The money was said to have been used to finance the Nepali Congress’s armed struggle against the monarchy. Mr. Subedi and others were subsequently arrested by the Indian authorities and held in jail for two years.
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