Provincial Official Languages of Nepal: Language Commission Recommendations

The Constitution of Nepal, 2015 (2072 Bikram Sambat) draws a deliberate line between two different kinds of language status. Article 6 declares that 'all languages spoken as the mother tongue in Nepal are the languages of the nation.' This is an inclusive, symbolic recognition: every one of the country's mother tongues, from Nepali to the smallest endangered language, carries equal dignity as a language of the nation. It does not, however, give any of them a role in government business.

Article 7 handles the practical question of which language the state actually works in. Article 7(1) states that 'the Nepali language in the Devanagari script shall be the official language of Nepal.' This makes Nepali the single federal-level official language for laws, federal offices and national administration. The distinction matters because a 'language of the nation' is about identity and equality, whereas an 'official language' is about the working language of government.

Article 7(2) then opens a door for provinces. It provides that 'a Province may, by a Provincial law, determine one or more languages of the nation spoken by a majority of people within the Province as its official language(s), in addition to the Nepali language.' Nepali is never displaced; provincial languages are layered on top. Article 7(3) adds that other language matters shall be decided by the Government of Nepal on the recommendation of the Language Commission, which is the constitutional body that produced the 2021 recommendation table.

The Language Commission, known in Nepali as the Bhasa Aayog, is a constitutional commission established under Article 287 of the Constitution. It was formed on 8 September 2016 (Bhadra 2073 BS), within the one-year window the Constitution set for its creation. Its core mandate is to determine the criteria a language must meet to serve as an official language, to recommend such languages to the government, and to advise on the protection, promotion and development of Nepal's mother tongues.

After roughly five years of surveys and province-level consultations, the Commission submitted its Official Language Recommendation Report to Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba on 6 September 2021. In total it recommended 14 languages for official use across the seven provinces, in addition to Nepali. Because some languages qualify in more than one province, the 14 recommendations cover fewer than 14 distinct languages.

The Commission did not pick languages arbitrarily. Its criteria weighed the size and concentration of the speaker population, the existence of a writing system, use in education and communication, archiving and documentation, linguistic vitality, and readiness for use in technology and public services. Population share was the leading factor, drawing on census data, so the recommended languages are broadly those spoken by large communities within each province.

The table below lists the languages the Language Commission recommended as additional provincial official languages in 2021. These are recommendations under Article 7(2) and 7(3); they take legal effect only when a Provincial Assembly enacts them into a provincial law. Nepali remains an official language in every province regardless of the additions.

For Koshi Province (formerly Province No. 1), the Commission recommended Maithili and Limbu. For Madhesh Province (formerly Province No. 2), it recommended Maithili, Bhojpuri and Bajjika, reflecting a province where Maithili speakers alone form a plurality of the population. For Bagmati Province, it recommended Tamang and Nepal Bhasa (Newar). For Gandaki Province, it recommended Magar, Gurung and Bhojpuri.

For Lumbini Province, the Commission recommended Tharu and Awadhi. For Karnali Province, it recommended Magar (some accounts also note the Karnali dialect of Nepali). For Sudurpashchim Province, it recommended Dotyali and Tharu. Readers should note that different media summaries occasionally list Gandaki's third language or Karnali's entry slightly differently, so the provincial law of record is the definitive source once enacted.

Two provinces attract the most search interest because their recommended languages have large, well-documented speaker bases. In Madhesh Province, the Commission's data showed Maithili speakers at about 45.30 percent of the province, Bhojpuri at about 18.58 percent, Bajjika at about 14.65 percent, and Nepali at roughly 6.67 percent. This is why Madhesh received three recommended official languages rather than one, and why Maithili is the standout provincial language of the eastern and central Tarai.

In Bagmati Province, home to the Kathmandu Valley, the recommended additions were Tamang and Nepal Bhasa. Bagmati is home to a large share of Nepal's Tamang population and to the Newar community whose historic language, Nepal Bhasa (also called Newari), has a centuries-old literary tradition in the Valley. Neither community forms a single province-wide majority, but both are large and concentrated, which is how they qualified under the Commission's population-plus-vitality criteria.

It is important to read 'official language of Madhesh' or 'official language of Bagmati' carefully. A recommendation is not automatically the law of the province; only a provincial enactment gives a language formal official status. As of 2024-2025, Bagmati had enacted its list while several other provinces were still drafting or debating bills.

The most common misunderstanding is to treat the 2021 table as if the languages are already official everywhere. They are not. Under Article 7(2), a language becomes a provincial official language only when the relevant Provincial Assembly passes a law adopting it, and provinces have moved at very different speeds.

Bagmati Province is the clearest case of full enactment. Its Provincial Assembly enacted the Bagmati Province Official Language Act, 2080 (certified around 9 November 2023), adopting Tamang and Nepal Bhasa alongside Nepali. Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal formally launched the Act's implementation on 6 May 2024, after which the three languages began appearing on ministry signboards and in official communication across the province.

Other provinces have generally lagged. Madhesh Province, for example, has worked on a draft official-language bill but had not brought its three recommended languages fully into force in the way Bagmati has. Experts have repeatedly cautioned that implementation is challenging: it requires trained staff, translated forms and documents, script and font support, and budget, so adoption tends to be gradual even after a recommendation is issued. For any specific province, the definitive answer is the text of that province's own official-language Act.

The honest answer depends on what is being counted. Nepal has exactly one federal official language, Nepali in the Devanagari script, under Article 7(1). This has not changed and applies nationwide. Every other language question sits at the provincial level or in the realm of national recognition.

At the level of national recognition, the 2021 National Population and Housing Census recorded 124 mother tongues spoken in Nepal, up from 111 in the 2011 census, with 13 languages newly identified. Every one of these is a 'language of the nation' under Article 6, but that status is symbolic rather than administrative.

At the provincial level, the Language Commission recommended 14 additional official languages in 2021, but these count only where a province has legislated them. So a precise summary is: one federal official language; 124 recognised mother tongues; and a growing, province-by-province list of enacted official languages, of which Bagmati's Tamang and Nepal Bhasa are the first to be fully in force.