25 Paisa - Mahendra Bir Bikram

King Mahendra came to power in 1955 and spent the early years of his reign dismantling the democratic institutions his father had reluctantly conceded — culminating in the 1960 royal coup that dissolved parliament and imprisoned Prime Minister B.P. Koirala. These coins were struck across that rupture without interruption, the mint making no distinction between constitutional monarchy and royal autocracy. Mahendra's subsequent Panchayat system would govern Nepal for the next three decades.