Provincial Public Service Commissions of Nepal (Pradesh Lok Sewa Aayog): Directory of All 7 Provinces

A Provincial Public Service Commission — in Nepali, Pradesh Lok Sewa Aayog, and in English usually rendered Province Public Service Commission (PPSC) — is the constitutional body that selects staff for a province's own government services and for the local levels (municipalities and rural municipalities) within that province. Each of Nepal's seven provinces operates a separate commission, so the country has seven provincial commissions in addition to the national Public Service Commission (Lok Sewa Aayog) in Kathmandu.

The commissions exist because Nepal's 2015 Constitution reorganised the country into a three-tier federal system: a federal government, seven provinces and 753 local levels. Just as the federal Public Service Commission recruits the federal civil service, each province needed an impartial, merit-based body to fill its own posts. The commissions publish vacancy notices, receive applications, hold written examinations and interviews, and recommend successful candidates to the appointing authority, while also advising the provincial government on the principles to be followed in appointment, promotion and departmental action.

The provincial commissions are created by Article 244 of the Constitution of Nepal (2072 BS / 2015 AD), which falls in Part 23 of the Constitution alongside the provisions for the federal Public Service Commission. Article 244 is deliberately brief, leaving most detail to provincial legislation while reserving uniform standards to the federal level.

Article 244 has three clauses. Clause (1) states that each State (province) shall have a State Public Service Commission. Clause (2) provides that the functions, duties and powers of the State Public Service Commission shall be as provided for in the State law. Clause (3) provides that the Federal Parliament shall, by law, determine the grounds and standards for the purposes of clause (2). In practice this means each province enacts its own Provincial Public Service Commission Act to set up and run its commission, but the basic criteria are harmonised by federal law so that recruitment standards remain broadly consistent across the country.

Provincial commissions are responsible for selecting candidates for posts that sit below the federal level. This covers the Province Civil Service and other provincial government services, the services of province-level public institutions, and — importantly — the Local Government Service and the services of local-level institutions. By taking on local-level recruitment, the provincial commissions relieve the federal Public Service Commission of much sub-national hiring and bring selection closer to the regions it serves.

Like the federal body, provincial commissions recruit across the standard Nepali grade structure, from non-gazetted assistant-level posts (such as fourth- and fifth-level assistants) up to gazetted officer-level posts, and across both technical services (engineering, health, agriculture, forestry) and non-technical administration. Applications are generally submitted through each commission's own online portal.

The national Public Service Commission (Lok Sewa Aayog) was established on 15 June 1951 (1 Ashad 2008 BS) and is headquartered at Anamnagar, Kathmandu. It is constituted under Article 242 of the Constitution with a chairperson and four members, and Article 243 sets out its functions — chiefly recruiting the federal civil service and being consulted on the laws, appointments, promotions and departmental action affecting federal employees. The provincial commissions are its counterparts at the provincial tier.

The clearest difference is jurisdiction: the federal commission recruits for federal government services nationwide, while each provincial commission recruits only for its own province's services and the local levels within it. A second difference is the legal source — the federal commission's powers come directly from the Constitution (Articles 242–243), whereas a provincial commission's detailed powers come from its own provincial Act, passed under the framework of Article 244 and the federal standards law. Each commission is also separate institutionally, with its own members, head office and online application portal; a candidate applies to whichever commission advertises the post they want.

All seven provinces have established their commissions through provincial legislation passed from 2076 BS (2019) onward — Madhesh and Koshi (then Province No. 1) were among the first to enact their Provincial Public Service Commission Acts in 2019, with the others following over 2019–2021. Each commission's head office is located in or near its provincial capital, and each operates under the .gov.np government domain. Candidates should always use the official .gov.np portals listed below and treat look-alike sites with caution.

The provincial commissions are one strand of the wider devolution introduced by the 2015 Constitution, which gives each province its own assembly, government and now its own merit-recruitment body. They sit alongside the broader province framework — capitals, districts and local levels — covered in Amarnepal's provinces hub, and they complement rather than replace the federal Lok Sewa Aayog.

Because each province writes its own Act within federally set standards, the commissions can tailor examination schedules, post structures and reservation arrangements to regional needs while keeping the core principles of open competition, transparency and merit. For job-seekers this means watching both the federal portal and the relevant provincial portal, since federal, provincial and local-level posts are advertised separately by their respective commissions.