Local Levels of Nepal by District and Province

The Constitution of Nepal, promulgated in 2015, reorganised the country into a federal democratic republic with three tiers of government: the federal (national) level, seven provinces, and the local level. Article 56 of the constitution defines the local level as comprising rural municipalities (gaunpalika), municipalities (nagarpalika) and district assemblies. Together these local units form the foundation of the federal state and are the layer of government closest to ordinary citizens.

The local level replaced the old structure that had existed before federalism, when local government consisted of fewer than 60 municipalities and, by the government's own figures at the time of dissolution, 3,157 Village Development Committees (VDCs); some secondary sources put the pre-restructuring VDC-and-municipality count as high as 3,915, though 3,157 is the figure used in official 2017 announcements. To draw the new map, a Local Level Restructuring Commission (LLRC) chaired by Balananda Paudel merged the VDCs and old municipalities into far fewer, larger units; the commission's initial recommendation of 719 local levels was raised before promulgation after demands for more units, particularly in the Tarai. On 10 March 2017 the Government of Nepal dissolved the VDC system and reconstituted the country into 744 new local units; on the recommendation of the Supreme Court, nine further units were later added in the Madhesh (then Province No. 2) region, bringing the final total to 753. No new local level has been added since, though a handful have been renamed or upgraded in class.

Each local level is an autonomous body with its own elected assembly and executive. The first local elections under the new constitution were held in three phases on 14 May, 28 June and 18 September 2017, the first local polls in roughly two decades, electing mayors/chairpersons, deputy mayors/vice-chairpersons, ward chairpersons and ward members across all 753 units.

Local levels are classified into four categories based on population, annual revenue, infrastructure and geographic region. From most to least urban, these are: metropolitan city (mahanagarpalika), sub-metropolitan city (upa-mahanagarpalika), municipality (nagarpalika) and rural municipality (gaunpalika). The first three classes are collectively counted as 'municipalities'; rural municipalities cover the more dispersed, less densely settled areas.

Classification thresholds reflect Nepal's varied geography. A metropolitan city broadly requires a very large population (on the order of 300,000–500,000 or more) and high annual revenue; a sub-metropolitan city requires a smaller but still substantial population and revenue. For municipalities the minimum population requirement scales by terrain, lower in mountain districts and higher in the Tarai and Kathmandu Valley, recognising that equal populations occupy very different areas in the high mountains versus the plains.

Nepal's six metropolitan cities are Kathmandu, Pokhara, Lalitpur, Bharatpur, Biratnagar and Birgunj. Three lie in the hills (Kathmandu and Lalitpur in the Kathmandu Valley, and Pokhara in the Pokhara Valley) and three in the Tarai plains (Bharatpur, Biratnagar and Birgunj). Pokhara Metropolitan City, formed by merging the former Pokhara and Lekhnath municipalities, is by far the largest by area, while Kathmandu is the most populous and the national capital.

The eleven sub-metropolitan cities are Itahari, Dharan, Janakpur (also rendered Janakpurdham), Jitpur Simara, Kalaiya, Hetauda, Butwal, Tulsipur, Ghorahi, Nepalgunj (also rendered Nepalganj) and Dhangadhi. These are regional hubs spread across the country; several serve as provincial capitals, including Hetauda (Bagmati), Janakpurdham (Madhesh) and Dhangadhi (a leading city of Sudurpashchim). Both metropolitan and sub-metropolitan cities are governed by a mayor and deputy mayor heading a municipal assembly and executive.

Reading each city by its district and province: Kathmandu Metropolitan City sits in Kathmandu district, Lalitpur Metropolitan City in Lalitpur district and Bharatpur Metropolitan City in Chitwan district, all three in Bagmati Province; Pokhara Metropolitan City is in Kaski district, Gandaki Province; and Biratnagar Metropolitan City (Morang district) and Birgunj Metropolitan City (Parsa district) sit in Koshi and Madhesh provinces respectively. Among the sub-metropolitan cities, Sunsari district (Koshi) hosts two, Itahari and Dharan; Bara district (Madhesh) also hosts two, Kalaiya and Jitpur Simara; and Dang district (Lumbini) hosts two, Ghorahi and Tulsipur. The remaining five, Janakpurdham (Dhanusha, Madhesh), Hetauda (Makwanpur, Bagmati), Butwal (Rupandehi, Lumbini), Nepalgunj (Banke, Lumbini) and Dhangadhi (Kailali, Sudurpashchim), are each their district's only sub-metropolitan city.

Every local level is subdivided into wards, the smallest unit of government in Nepal. Across the 753 local levels there are 6,743 wards in total. The number of wards in any single unit is fixed by law within a range: a rural municipality has between 5 and 21 wards, while a municipality (including metropolitan and sub-metropolitan cities) has between 9 and 35 wards. Kathmandu Metropolitan City, for example, is divided into 32 wards and Pokhara Metropolitan City into 33.

Each ward elects a ward chairperson and four ward members, of whom at least two must be women and at least one a Dalit woman, ensuring inclusive representation at the grassroots. The ward committee delivers front-line services such as vital registration (births, deaths and marriages), local recommendations and certificates, and small-scale ward-level development works, making the ward the point where most citizens interact with their government.

The 753 local levels are not evenly distributed; they are concentrated in the more populous eastern and central provinces. The figures below give each province's number of districts and total local levels. The local-level counts sum to exactly 753, and the district counts to 77.

Koshi and Madhesh provinces in the east and south-east hold the most local levels, reflecting dense Tarai settlement, while the mountainous Karnali Province in the north-west has the fewest. Bagmati Province, home to the Kathmandu Valley, contains three of the country's six metropolitan cities.

Because districts vary enormously in population and area, the number of local levels per district ranges from as few as three up to twenty. The densely populated Tarai districts of Madhesh Province dominate the top of the ranking: Sarlahi holds the most 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 districts near the top are 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 (Gandaki) and the remote Karnali district of Mugu, with 4 each. Bhaktapur also has only 4, all of them urban municipalities, reflecting a small but heavily urbanised valley district rather than a sparsely populated one.

Each of Nepal's 77 districts contains a defined set of local levels. A district such as Kaski in Gandaki Province, for instance, includes Pokhara Metropolitan City alongside several municipalities and rural municipalities; smaller mountain districts may contain only a handful of rural municipalities. Listing a district's local levels typically shows each unit's name, its type (metropolitan city, sub-metropolitan city, municipality or rural municipality), its headquarters, and the number of wards it contains.

Because districts are nested inside provinces, a province's full list of local levels is simply the union of its districts' lists. This nesting, local level within district within province, is the structure used by Nepal's official statistics and the basis on which census populations, ward counts and administrative responsibilities are reported.

Kathmandu district is a useful worked example. Nepal's most populous district contains 11 local levels: one metropolitan city (Kathmandu Metropolitan City, the national capital) and ten municipalities, Budhanilkantha, Chandragiri, Dakshinkali, Gokarneshwar, Kageshwari Manohara, Kirtipur, Nagarjun, Shankharapur, Tarakeshwar and Tokha, and, unusually, not a single rural municipality. Kathmandu shares this fully urbanised profile with only one other district, neighbouring Bhaktapur.

Local levels are not merely administrative subdivisions; they are constitutionally empowered governments. Schedule 8 of the Constitution of Nepal lists 22 exclusive powers of the local level, and Schedule 9 lists 15 powers shared concurrently with the federal and provincial governments. Local governments are responsible for areas including town and village planning, local roads and basic infrastructure, basic and secondary education, basic health and sanitation, drinking water, local markets, agriculture and livestock extension, disaster management, and the collection of certain local taxes and fees.

The Local Government Operation Act, 2074 (2017), which came into force in October 2017, provides the detailed legal framework for how local levels exercise these legislative, executive and quasi-judicial functions. Among other things it establishes local assemblies as law-making bodies, defines the role of the executive headed by the mayor or chairperson, and creates judicial committees that mediate and adjudicate certain local disputes, giving each of the 753 local levels a genuine measure of self-government. Within each district, local levels are coordinated (not governed) by a District Coordination Committee (DCC), which replaced the old district development committee but with considerably reduced powers, leaving the local levels themselves as the principal locus of grassroots governance and service delivery.