District Administration Office (DAO) Nepal: Directory of All 77 Districts for Citizenship, Passport, NID and PCC

The District Administration Office (DAO), in Nepali Jilla Prashasan Karyalaya (जिल्ला प्रशासन कार्यालय), is the principal field office of Nepal's central government in each district. There is one in every one of Nepal's 77 districts, normally located in the district headquarters town, and each works under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA). The DAO is the office most citizens deal with for identity documents and security-related permits, which makes it one of the most visited government offices in the country.

Each DAO is headed by a Chief District Officer (CDO, Pramukh Jilla Adhikari), the senior-most representative of the Government of Nepal at the district level. The CDO is appointed by the government through the Ministry of Home Affairs and is responsible for maintaining peace, order and security, coordinating federal, provincial and local government activity, and exercising powers granted by dozens of separate laws. The CDO also acts as the district's executive magistrate, with quasi-judicial authority to hear certain cases and emergency powers to impose curfews, declare restricted areas and mobilise security forces when public order is threatened.

Official DAO websites follow a consistent pattern under the MoHA domain — for example daokathmandu.moha.gov.np for Kathmandu and daobardiya.moha.gov.np for Bardiya — giving each district its own contact details, notices and downloadable forms. Standard public counter hours are generally 09:00 to 17:00, Sunday to Friday.

The DAO and the office of the CDO rest on the Local Administration Act, 2028 (1971). The Act was enacted to run local administration under a decentralised system and to keep peace and order; Section 5 of the Act provides for a district administration office in every district to conduct the general administration of that district. Over time the CDO has also accumulated powers under more than ninety other prevailing laws, covering matters from arms and explosives to disaster response and immigration.

Because the CDO concentrates security, administrative and quasi-judicial authority in one official, the position is widely regarded as among the most powerful in Nepal's civil service. The CDO inspects district-level government offices across sectors such as health, education and security, and coordinates the work of the Nepal Police, Armed Police Force, Nepal Army and the National Investigation Department within the district.

Issuing the Certificate of Nepalese Citizenship (nagarikta pramanpatra) is one of the DAO's best-known functions. An applicant normally applies at the DAO of the district covering their permanent address, on the recommendation of the local ward office, after the office verifies parental citizenship, birth registration and residency. When documents and a witness are in order, the certificate can often be issued the same day.

Citizenship is the foundational document for almost every other government service in Nepal: it is required to apply for a passport, to enrol for the National Identity Card, to register property or a business, and to obtain a Police Clearance Certificate. Rules around citizenship are set by the Constitution and the Nepal Citizenship Act, with the DAO acting as the issuing authority at district level.

The Nepalese passport is issued by the Department of Passports, which sits under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs — not the Ministry of Home Affairs. However, the DAO is the local point of service: passports are distributed from the Central Passport Office in Kathmandu, from the District Administration Office in all 77 district headquarters, and from Nepalese embassies and consulates abroad. To apply at a DAO, an applicant pre-enrols online through the Department of Passports portal, selects the DAO as the collection centre, pays the fee at the designated bank counter, and attends biometric capture at the office. The standard adult passport is valid for ten years (five years for minors under ten).

The DAO is also the biometric enrolment point for the National Identity Card (Rastriya Parichaya Patra), issued by the Department of National ID and Civil Registration (DoNIDCR) under MoHA, on the basis of the National Identity Card and Civil Registration Act, 2076 (2019). Registration is a two-step process: online pre-enrolment with DoNIDCR, followed by capture of the applicant's photograph, ten fingerprints, iris scan and digital signature at the nearest DAO. The National Identity Number generated through this process is now required for new e-passport applications, which ties the two services together.

A Police Clearance Certificate (PCC) is a document certifying a person's criminal-record status, commonly required for foreign employment, study, migration and visa applications. It is important to be clear about which office issues it: the PCC is issued by Nepal Police, not by the District Administration Office. Nepal Police operates under the Ministry of Home Affairs, the same ministry as the DAO, but the two are separate offices.

Applicants can apply online through Nepal Police's central clearance portal or in person at a District Police Office, a Metropolitan Police office, or Nepal Police Headquarters (CID section) in Naxal, Kathmandu. A District Police Office exists in every district alongside the DAO, so while both are district-level Home Ministry presences, the PCC counter is at the police office. A valid citizenship certificate — issued by the DAO — is among the documents normally needed to obtain a PCC, which is why the two services are often mentioned together.

This directory maps the DAO network onto Nepal's canonical list of 77 districts. Each district has exactly one DAO, normally in the district headquarters — for example the DAO for Kaski is in Pokhara, for Morang in Biratnagar and for Kailali in Dhangadhi — so a directory hub plus one page per district mirrors the real administrative structure one-to-one.

Each per-district entry identifies the DAO, the district and headquarters it serves, and the services available locally — citizenship, passport pre-enrolment and collection, and National Identity Card biometrics — and points to the relevant how-to guidance and to the official MoHA DAO website for that district. Because the PCC is a Nepal Police service rather than a DAO service, district pages signpost the District Police Office for police clearance rather than implying the DAO issues it.

For search engines, a hub page can carry an ItemList of all 77 districts, while each district page can describe its office with GovernmentOrganization structured data referencing the Ministry of Home Affairs. Durable details — the legal basis, the parent ministry, the office's standing functions and the list of districts — change rarely; time-sensitive details such as exact fees and processing times are deliberately kept out, since those are revised periodically and should be checked on the official portals.