The simmering tussle between the federal and provincial governments played out in October 2024 when Bagmati Province's Labor, Employment and Transportation Minister Laxman Lamsal filed a writ petition at the Supreme Court, demanding scrapping of Urban Area Public Transport (Management) Act. The Act, passed by the Federal Parliament, gave Singh Durbar the power to set up an authority for managing public transport across three of the 13 districts of Bagmati Province – Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur. By the way, this was the seventh writ petition, and the Apex Court was already sitting on six more, all moved by Madhesh Province, the first one in 2019, challenging the Federal Forest Ministry's decision to merge the Sagarnath Forest Development Project with the Timber Corporation of Nepal. A Constitutional Bench within the Supreme Court, mandated to sort out any row or conflict between federal and provincial governments, backed the Government of Madhesh Province, but the final verdict is still due. In March 2024, the National Assembly’s Federalism Strengthening and National Concern Committee advised the federal government to eliminate redundant offices, streamlining the role and responsibilities of the government. The bottom line is that the federal government in Nepal appears all over and with overlapping jurisdictions. Some offices under the federal government, including agriculture, livestock, forest and education are operating at the municipality/rural municipality level. There are duplications and they need to be addressed.
Meanwhile, there have been some positive developments. The government has appointed a high-level committee, led by Chudamani Paudel, Cabinet Secretary, to implement the recommendations from the 2081 BS study report on merging, abolishing, or transferring separate structures established to perform the same tasks. The committee will also address the suggestions from the Public Expenditure Review Commission, led by former National Planning Commission Vice-Chair and economist Dilliraj Khanal, to reduce public expenditure. The Khanal Commission is said to have recommended that the federal government is too bloated and must be reduced to 16 ministries and 35 departments. While some ministries and departments need to be merged, others need to be created. The Prime Minister's Office has tasked the Poudel-led committee to study the appropriate actions for merging, abolishing, or relocating unnecessary government offices and departments or shifting them to provincial and local levels. The government is expected to act on the recommendations provided by Poudel's committee. The Khanal Commission recommended reducing the number of divisions under ministries to a maximum of five, and staff members not exceeding 90. The commission has also advised reducing employee positions in the federal government by up to 60 percent.
Reading Between the Lines of Why Bharat Matters
Nepal is a federal republic with a federal government. Federalism is a system of government that distributes power between the federal government and provincial/local governments. In a nutshell a federal government governs the nation as a whole and is mainly responsible for the conduct of major national affairs: defense, foreign policy, and trade and commerce and implements mega strategic projects. The provincial and local levels are mainly responsible for the delivery of goods and services to the people, and for implementing the developmental projects. A bloated federal government with too many ministries, departments and institutions directly reporting to one or the other federal ministry only makes the entire process cumbersome, and the government itself can neither function effectively or efficiently.
