Local Levels of Nepal (753): Full Directory, Types & Rankings

Nepal is divided into 753 local levels (Nepali: sthaniya taha), the third and lowest tier of the federal state created by the Constitution of Nepal 2015 (Bikram Sambat 2072) and operationalised by the Local Government Operation Act, 2074 (2017 AD). These local levels sit below the seven provinces and are grouped for record-keeping into the country's 77 districts. Each local level is an elected, self-governing unit with its own mayor or chairperson, executive and assembly, and its own ward committees.

The 753 local levels break down into four legal types. There are 6 metropolitan cities (mahanagarpalika), 11 sub-metropolitan cities (upa-mahanagarpalika), 276 municipalities (nagarpalika) and 460 rural municipalities (gaunpalika). Adding the three urban classes together gives 293 urban local levels — 6 plus 11 plus 276 — against 460 rural municipalities. Together the 753 units are subdivided into 6,743 wards, the smallest unit of Nepali government, each with its own elected ward chairperson and members.

This four-way type split is the single most searched fact about Nepal's local structure, yet it is often lost because directories list only names. The number 753 has been stable since the restructuring took effect on 10 March 2017 (Falgun 2073 BS); the Local Level Restructuring Commission first recommended 719 units, and the figure was raised to 753 before promulgation after demands for more units, especially in the Tarai. No new local levels have been added since, though a handful have been renamed or upgraded in class.

A metropolitan city (mahanagarpalika) is the highest class of urban local level. Under the criteria used in the restructuring, a metropolitan city is expected to have a population of at least about 500,000, substantial annual revenue, and city-scale infrastructure such as universities, specialist hospitals, stadiums and international-standard services. Nepal has exactly six, and no metropolitan city has been added since 2017.

Three of the six lie in the hills and three in the Tarai plains. Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Pokhara are the hill metros; Biratnagar, Bharatpur and Birgunj are the Tarai metros. Kathmandu Metropolitan City is the national capital and largest city; Pokhara is the largest by area and Nepal's tourism capital; Bharatpur (Chitwan) has grown into the commercial hub of south-central Nepal; Birgunj (Parsa) is the country's main land trade gateway to India; Biratnagar (Morang) is the industrial city of the east; and Lalitpur (Patan) is the historic Newar city adjoining Kathmandu.

A sub-metropolitan city (upa-mahanagarpalika) is the second class of urban local level, expected to have a population of at least about 200,000 and national-standard urban services and infrastructure, but below the threshold for a full metropolitan city. Nepal has eleven of them. They serve as regional centres and, in several cases, provincial capitals or provincial economic hubs.

The eleven are spread across five provinces: Koshi, Madhesh, Bagmati, Lumbini and Sudurpashchim. Lumbini holds the most with four (Butwal, Nepalgunj, Ghorahi and Tulsipur), Madhesh has three (Kalaiya, Jitpur Simara and Janakpurdham), Koshi has two (Dharan and Itahari), and Bagmati and Sudurpashchim have one each (Hetauda and Dhangadhi). Three districts host two sub-metropolitan cities apiece: Sunsari (Dharan and Itahari), Bara (Kalaiya and Jitpur Simara) and Dang (Ghorahi and Tulsipur). Several sub-metros are provincial capitals or de facto provincial centres, including Hetauda (capital of Bagmati Province), Janakpurdham (capital of Madhesh Province) and Dhangadhi (a leading city of Sudurpashchim).

The 753 local levels are not evenly split between the seven provinces; they follow both population and the number of districts each province contains. Koshi Province has the most local levels, followed closely by Madhesh Province, which packs the second-highest count into only eight densely populated Tarai districts. At the other end, Karnali Province — the largest by area but the most sparsely populated — has the fewest.

The distribution below groups the local levels by province, with the district count for context. Madhesh's high local-level density per district reflects its crowded Tarai plains, where units are small in area but large in population; Karnali and Gandaki, by contrast, have fewer, larger, more thinly populated units in the high mountains. Because Madhesh's eight districts share 136 local levels, its districts top the per-district rankings covered in the next section.

Because districts vary enormously in population and area, the number of local levels per district ranges from as many as twenty down to just three. The densely populated Tarai districts of Madhesh Province dominate the top of the ranking: Sarlahi holds the most local levels of any district in Nepal with 20, followed by a cluster of Madhesh districts — Dhanusha, Rautahat and Saptari with 18 each, Siraha with 17, and Bara with 16. The only non-Madhesh district near the top is Morang (Koshi) with 17 and Rupandehi (Lumbini) with 16.

At the bottom of the ranking sit the high-mountain and Kathmandu Valley districts. Rukum East (Lumbini) has the fewest with just 3 local levels, followed by the trans-Himalayan districts of Manang and Mustang and the remote Karnali district of Mugu with 4 each. Bhaktapur also has only 4, all of them urban municipalities. These low counts reflect either tiny, thinly populated mountain districts or, in Bhaktapur's case, a small but heavily urbanised valley district. Kathmandu district, the most populous in the country, contains 11 local levels — one metropolitan city and ten municipalities, with no rural municipality at all.

Kathmandu is Nepal's most populous district and a good illustration of how a district's local levels are read off the directory. It contains 11 local levels: one metropolitan city and ten municipalities, and — unusually — not a single rural municipality, a feature it shares only with neighbouring Bhaktapur. This makes Kathmandu a fully urbanised district in local-government terms.

The one metropolitan city is Kathmandu Metropolitan City itself, the national capital. The ten surrounding municipalities ring the capital across the valley floor and the encircling hills. Reading a district entry this way — a type label attached to each named unit — is exactly what this directory adds over the older flat name lists, which stated the names but not whether each was a metropolis, municipality or rural municipality.

Nepal classifies its 753 local levels into four legal types, distinguished mainly by population size, revenue and the level of urban infrastructure required. The two rural-versus-urban categories carry the same legal powers, but the class determines the size of the council and certain service obligations. Understanding the labels is essential to reading the directory, because a name alone (say, 'Bharatpur' or 'Budhanilkantha') does not reveal whether a unit is a metropolis, a municipality or a rural municipality.

A metropolitan city (mahanagarpalika) is the largest urban class, and a sub-metropolitan city (upa-mahanagarpalika) is the next tier down, both defined by high population and strong urban services. A municipality (nagarpalika) is a smaller urban unit — the population threshold varies by geography, being lower in the mountains and higher in the Tarai and Kathmandu Valley. A rural municipality (gaunpalika) is the rural, generally lower-density unit that replaced the old Village Development Committees (VDCs); at 460 units it is the single most common type, more than the 293 urban levels combined.

All four types elect a chair or mayor, a deputy, and ward representatives; the executive head of a metropolis or municipality is a mayor (nagar pramukh) while a rural municipality is led by a chairperson (adhyaksha). These classifications were fixed at the 2017 restructuring under the constitution and the Local Government Operation Act, 2074, and administered by the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration (MoFAGA).