Raju Nath Pandey of the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) has been elected to the House of Representatives from Kathmandu-3, defeating his closest rival Kulman Ghising of the Ujyalo Nepal Party by a margin of 7,586 votes.

According to final results released by the Election Commission on Friday evening, Pandey, 55, secured 18,757 votes.

Kulman Ghising, the chairman of the newly formed Ujyalo Nepal Party and former energy minister, finished second with 11,171 votes. Ghising, widely credited for ending Nepal’s power outage crisis during his tenure at the Nepal Electricity Authority, had entered the political fray as a key contender for the prime ministerial post but failed to replicate his administrative popularity at the ballot box.

Traditional political forces faced a significant setback in the constituency. Ramesh Aryal of the Nepali Congress stood third with 6,000 votes, while the CPN-UML candidate and former provincial minister Rameshwar Phuyal finished a distant fourth with 3,816 votes.

Sunder Ram Bohara of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party managed to secure only 841 votes.