Prime Minister Balendra Shah has turned the spotlight on Khula Manch, Kathmandu’s historic open-air venue, with a sarcastic Facebook post that doubles as a reminder of who restored it.
In the post published on October 4, the Balen Shah Khula Manch remark reads, in Nepali: thank goodness Khula Manch was built well, because a new party has been able to hold its program there and hurl insults freely. The one-liner, typical of Shah’s combative social media style, was widely read as a jab at rival parties now using the venue his city administration rebuilt.
From parking lot to public stage
Khula Manch, the open theater near Tundikhel in the heart of Kathmandu, is among the most politically storied public spaces in Nepal. In April 1990, crowds gathered there to celebrate the fall of the party-less Panchayat system and the arrival of multi-party democracy.
The decades after were less kind. Parts of the open ground were converted into a parking area, and illegal sheds and stalls encroached on the public land, with contractors profiting while the venue decayed. In 2019, Kathmandu Metropolitan City demolished 52 illegally built stalls at the site after sustained public pressure.
The turnaround came during Shah’s term as mayor. A structural engineer by profession, Shah made the reclamation of public spaces a hallmark of his administration, and Khula Manch was restored with fresh greenery and landscaping while its physical structures were repaired and brought under proper management. The old Khula Manch, once described as a parking dump, was turned into a proper public ground.
In April 2026, the restored venue was formally reopened to the public, with Acting Mayor Sunita Dangol inaugurating the space. The grounds are now designated for public wellness activities including yoga and meditation, alongside their historic role as a stage for rallies and large public programs.
There is also a resilience angle that matters to engineers. When the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal in 2015, thousands of Kathmandu residents took refuge in the open grounds of Khula Manch and Tundikhel. In one of the world’s most densely built capitals, large open spaces double as life-saving infrastructure during disasters. Every ropani of open ground converted to parking or commercial sheds is a ropani lost to emergency shelter, groundwater recharge, and public health.
That is what makes the venue’s restoration technically significant, beyond the politics. The project reversed a two-decade trend of encroachment: illegal commercial structures cleared, greenery and landscaping restored, and the grounds returned to managed public use. For a city where open space is disappearing under concrete, the rebuild was as much a land-use decision as a construction project. The Balen Shah Khula Manch episode is typical of how Shah, a structural engineer himself, has framed his urban interventions in physical terms: clear the encroachment, fix the structure, return the asset to the public. Khula Manch is now the most visible example of that approach, a finished project his critics literally stand on when they address crowds.
Why the Balen Shah Khula Manch post matters
Shah’s remark lands differently given his own rise. Elected mayor of Kathmandu as an independent in 2022 with 61,767 votes, the former rapper and engineer built a national reputation on visible urban fixes before resigning, joining the Rastriya Swatantra Party, winning the Jhapa-5 parliamentary seat, and taking office as prime minister in March 2026.
For an engineering audience, the Balen Shah Khula Manch episode is a small case study in how public-realm projects outlive their builders. A venue restored under one administration becomes the stage for the next round of politics, used even by its critics. Shah’s post, for all its sarcasm, makes the builder’s point: the work stands, whoever speaks from the stage. Eve Construction earlier covered Shah’s Building Act 2083 housing announcement in detail.
Source: Balendra Shah on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/balenOfficial/posts/pfbid02FiT4LH5HJz7MRMJKSL7BdxqSohCZBo8bZEmtcGPSc22zr6j2UXH1y2bxpYe2S89rl