2017

The first local-level election after the promulgation of the 2015 Constitution was held under a Sher Bahadur Deuba-led government in three phases on 14 May, 28 June and 18 September.

Nepal’s first party-based local elections were held in 1959, and the last successful local election before the federal system was in 1997, soon after the armed Maoist insurgency began. 

Ahead of the first phase of the polls in May 2017, Nepali Times traced the history of local level elections in Nepal, and prepared a Village Development Committee map of the 1997 local election results.

From May to September, municipal and ward- level leaders were elected to 753 local units. Nepal has had one more election after 2017, and the general consensus has been that the performance of municipalities has exceeded expectations, but the same cannot be said of provincial governments.

Dasain in 2017 fell between the end of the local election and the upcoming general election. We wrote: 

‘We are now finally nearing the end of a two-decade-long political transition. The peace process has dragged on, and we waited years haggling over the kind of federalism and the names of provinces and their borders, only to find out now that all the people wanted were jobs at home.. affordable education and medical facilities, electricity and fuel, and to be left alone to pursue their own happiness.’

Provincial and parliamentary elections were held on 26 November and 7 December. The UML and Maoists had formed an electoral alliance with the intention of merging after the polls, which the NC, RPP and Madhes-based parties countered with their own ‘democratic alliance’.

The UML and Maoists combined to form Nepal’s largest party, the Nepal Communist Party, in 2018 but the merger would be short-lived. The UML consequently swept the polls, and K P Oli went on to be the prime minister in a left-led government. The end of the election operationalised a federal, secular, democratic Nepal.

The work was then cut out for the newly-elected leadership to govern properly. An excerpt from a column after the election in December 2017: 

‘There is a Constitution to implement, hundreds of new laws and regulations to enact under it, constitutional principles of local government to be defended, inter-community relations to be normalised, inter-relationships within the new state structure to be defined and rationalised, and a confident new foreign policy put in place, especially to tackle the two ascendant neighbours.’

Nepal also elected leaders to the seven provincial assemblies for the first time in 2017. However, despite Nepalis by and large welcoming a federal system, some felt that federalism was wasteful and should be scrapped, a sentiment that pro-monarchist parties and the RSP have now capitalised on. 

Various studies and surveys however show that Nepalis understand the ineffectiveness of the provinces lies in the federal leadership reluctant  to devolve power and decentralise.