Gen-Z Leaders See Nepal Army Chief's Endorsement of 'Extremist' Elements as Threat to Democracy; Trump Softens Modi Even As He Mobilises EU Against India

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

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Snapshot of the day

September 10, 2025

Siddharth Varadarajan

The Election Commission of India will “soon decide on the date to roll out a special intensive revision on a pan-India basis and the exercise to clean up the voter list across states may take place before the end of the year,” PTI quotes officials as saying today. However, unless the ground rules are transparent and all parties agree, the process is likely to aggravate the current standoff between the Opposition on the one hand and the ECI and ruling BJP on the other.

The situation in Nepal following the mass upheaval of the past two days remains tense and fluid though local media reports that the Nepal Army has managed to put an end to the violence which took the lives of at least six people on Wednesday. While the army’s role in ensuring law and order has been welcomed by the country’s young protesters who feel their movement was hijacked by extremist elements on Wednesday, some Gen Z leaders have expressed their misgivings about the direction the Nepal Army wants the country’s politics to take.

On the street, the name of Sushila Karki, a former chief justice of Nepal, has emerged as a popular choice for head of an interim government. Other names in the fray are Balen Shah, the current mayor of Kathmandu, and Harka Sampang, the mayor of Dharan, a city in eastern Nepal. However, youth leaders were taken aback by some of the suggestions made by army chief General Ashok Raj Sigdel, including his description of a Hindutva-oriented businessman as a ‘stakeholder’. The independent digital news platform Setopati reports:

“President Ram Chandra Paudel and General Sigdel had called for talks Tuesday evening. Following the call for talks, different Gen Z groups were found to have gone to the Army Headquarters for discussions… A representative from one of the groups that went to the Army Headquarters said that they left after "Chief of the Army Staff Sigdel told them to talk to Durga Prasai and representatives of the Rastriya Swatantra Party."

"After Chief of the Army Staff himself called us to meet with the President and said, 'Please sit down for talks with Durga Prasai and the RSP group; they are also stakeholders,' we rejected the proposal and left the Nepal Army headquarters. The sacrifice of the Gen Z movement and the journey of this epoch-making change would be wasted, so we are now preparing to discuss with the protesting Gen Z group," she said.

“This reaction from [Army HQ] was also brought up in the Gen Z's live discussion. They have rejected the idea of holding talks with Durga Prasai and RSP. The Gen Z youth participating in the discussion emphasised the need to protect democracy. They said that it's important to prevent the country's leadership from falling into the hands of an extremist group by taking advantage of this sensitive time.”

Prasai is a controversial businessman known for his espousal of Hindutva and monarchist positions while the RSP is a populist party, led by former deputy Prime Minister Rabi Lamicchane, that has emerged unscathed from the popular revolt against the establishment.

The Hindustan Times’s Shishir Gupta, frequently used by the Indian establishment to float trial balloons, ran a story playing up the ‘grief’ expressed by Gyanendra – the last king of Nepal – over the killing of 19 protesters by the police on the first day of the Gen Z movement. Gyandendra is one of many political players made irrelevant by the establishment of the