Nepal Government to Hand Over Land Administration Services to All Local Levels Within One Month

In line with the constitutional spirit of federalism and local governance, the Government of Nepal is rapidly accelerating preparations to transfer land administration services directly to local municipalities across the country.

Announcing the policy directive via a public statement, Prime Minister Balendra (Balen) Shah confirmed that the government aims to make land administration operational across all local levels within the next month.

Legal Framework and Expansion Strategy

The initiative aligns with provisions set forth in the Constitution of Nepal, the Local Government Operation Act, 2074 (2017), and the recent Land-Related (Amendment) Ordinance, 2083 (2026).

According to Prime Minister Shah, land administration and survey services are already functioning successfully across 33 local levels. Building on this baseline, the federal government has mandated the nationwide rollout to ensure all 753 local units can deliver land-related services directly to citizens.

“The Nepal Government remains fully committed to providing the necessary technical, administrative, and technological support to ensure local units can seamlessly assume these responsibilities,” the Prime Minister stated.

Direct Benefits for Citizens and Governance

Decentralizing land administration is expected to solve decade-old systemic hurdles in Nepalese public service delivery:

• Elimination of Distant Bureaucracy: Citizens will no longer need to travel long distances to district-level Land Revenue (Malpot) and Survey (Napi) offices for routine property verification, ownership transfers, or land plotting.
• Reduction of Middlemen and Bureaucratic Friction: Processing transactions through municipal offices and integrated digital systems is anticipated to reduce bribery, unauthorized brokers, and administrative delays.
• Empowering Local Autonomy: The transition enables local governments to fully exercise their constitutional authority over local land management, revenue collection, and urban planning.

As technical integration and staff deployment commence, the nationwide decentralization of land administration marks one of the most substantial structural administrative shifts since the implementation of federalism in Nepal.