Rastriya Swatantra Party has continued its signature campaign as a strategy to gain public support in favour of the party chief Rabi Lamichhane, who has been in judicial custody for more than four months over high-profile cooperative fraud allegations.

Portraying the case as a politically motivated attack, the RSP launched the signature drive that, according to the party, is garnering strong public support.

The campaign was launched on June 21—coinciding with the party’s third anniversary—with the release of a 20-page public appeal authored by Lamichhane himself.

In the document, Lamichhane claims that his detention was not based on legal grounds but was motivated with a plan to weaken the RSP, with the major political parties perceiving it as a threat for them in the next elections.

Lamichhane is currently in judicial custody in Rupandehi over allegations of embezzling funds from several cooperatives when he was managing director of the now-defunct Galaxy 4K television channel. He quit the television job to join politics in 2022.

In 2022, he formed the RSP which quickly rose to power by winning 20 seats in the general elections in November the same year. The party added one more seat later in the by-election.

Lamichhane was sent to judicial custody over charges of embezzling deposits from the Butwal-based Supreme Cooperative while cases have been filed against him also in four other districts—Kathmandu, Kaski, Chitwan and Parsa.

On April 4, the Tulsipur High Court overturned a bail decision by Rupandehi District Court and ordered Lamichhane be remanded in custody for further investigation.

His wife Nikita Paudel moved the Supreme Court challenging the high court order. On May 22, the apex court upheld the high court’s decision stating that based on the immediately available evidence, it could not be reasonably believed that the defendant was innocent.

After that, the RSP intensified efforts to rally public support, portraying Lamichhane’s arrest as a political move targeted by major political forces.

Some political observers say that a party like RSP has many national responsibilities and that politicising the party chief’s matter is a mistake.

That the party has taken ownership of mistakes Lamichhane committed before entering politics risks RSP getting reduced to ‘Rabi’s Club’, said Keshav Dahal, a political analyst.

RSP spokesperson Manish Jha said that the party has been collecting an average of 100,000 signatures and raising Rs200,000 donations daily. According to Jha, each page used for the campaign contains 10 signatures, and the party has calculated the signatures based on the number of pages used each day.

When the Post inquired with some people near the party’s signature campaign booths in some areas including Battisputali and Balkhu in Kathmandu, local residents said they observed a respectable turnout to sign the petition.

But there are critics of the campaign. Writer Khagendra Sangraula ridiculed the merit of such a turnout, sharing his experience on X.

“Right now, there’s a lot of noise about how many signatures have been collected—this many and that many. We had launched a signature campaign to protest the killing of singer Praveen Gurung, who was run over by Paras Shah’s car,” Sangraula wrote. “When the signatures reached around ten thousand, we handed over the petition to the then prime minister, claiming there were a million. No one counted the signatures, and no action was ever taken!”

Sangraula was referring to a 25-year-old case: In 2000, the student wing of the CPN (ML) had launched the signature campaign demanding action against then prince Paras Shah and submitted the signatures to the palace. The student organisation claimed to have submitted a collection of 500,000 signatures.

RSP’s campaign, however, has found supporters among some of the country’s better known individuals. Former prime minister Baburam Bhattarai, former Supreme Court justice Balaram KC, artist Ragini Upadhyay, among other noted personalities from various sectors, have expressed solidarity in favour of Lamichhane by joining the signature campaign.

The signature collection drive has been conducted across all seven provinces and abroad as well. According to the party’s claim, 28 diaspora coordination centres operate under the RSP for the campaign.

Starting on Monday, the party launched a door-to-door campaign as part of the signature collection initiative. Jha explained that this effort aims to reach those who, due to various reasons, were unable to reach the signature booths but are eager to sign the petition.

RSP claims that the primary objective of the initiative is to gather signatures, not financial contributions, and the donations received are entirely voluntary. So far, one individual—under the condition of anonymity—has contributed up to Rs500,000 for the campaign.

When the campaign was launched, the initial plan was to run it for 90 days.

“We initially aimed to collect signatures equivalent to the number of Proportional Representatives votes we received in the last election,” Jha said. “But now, within just a few more days, the number of signatures collected will surpass that of CPN-UML, the party that received the highest votes under the proportional representation category.”

RSP garnered 1,130,344 PR votes, while UML obtained 2,845,641 votes in the November 2022 election.

“Considering the request from our diaspora teams, we have decided to continue this campaign at least until the Dashain-Tihar festivals,” Jha said.

Advocate Om Prakash Aryal finds a problem in a political party using the signature campaign as a movement against an independent judiciary.

Aryal says that although the campaign is being framed as one “against political revenge,” it targets sub judice cases.

“Campaigns like these, launched before any offence has even been proven or disproven, amount to a ‘continuous crime’,” Aryal said. “They attempt to influence the court, intimidate lawyers representing victims, and undermine the credibility of the independent judiciary.”