Sarlahi Districtसर्लाही जिल्ला

Sarlahi stretches 1,259 km² across the central-eastern Tarai, bounded on the west by the Bagmati river — which separates it from Rautahat — and on the east by Mahottari, with Bihar to the south. The headquarters Malangwa lies near the southern border, while the district's commercial pulse beats along the East–West Highway in the north, through Lalbandi, Hariwan and Barahathwa. With 20 local levels — eleven municipalities and nine rural municipalities — Sarlahi has more local governments than any other district in Nepal.

The 2021 census counted 862,470 people, the third-largest district population in Madhesh, at 685 per km². Sarlahi straddles the Tarai's linguistic divide: Bajjika is the mother tongue of 50.0 percent of residents and Maithili of 25.7 percent, with Nepali (8.6 percent) concentrated along the highway belt; Yadavs (16.1 percent) are the largest single community and 85.7 percent of the population is Hindu. Literacy, at 60.3 percent of those aged 5+, is the third-lowest in the country — only Rautahat and Mahottari, its neighbours, rank lower.

Agriculture dominates: Sarlahi typically plants about 40,000 hectares of paddy, 30,000 of wheat, 21,000 of sugarcane, 16,000 of maize and 13,000 hectares of vegetables, and Lalbandi's commercial vegetable belt — best known for tomatoes — supplies markets across the country. The district is both a beneficiary and a hostage of water: it is among the five Madhesh districts the Sunkoshi–Marin diversion is meant to irrigate through the Bagmati Irrigation Project, yet failed monsoons (as in 2025, when transplanting stalled across the province) and Bagmati floods remain the recurring risks of its farm economy.