Constitutional Law · Chapter 7
Study notes aligned to the official NEB syllabus.
Under the Constitution of Nepal 2015, Nepal is a federal democratic republic. It has three tiers of government. The middle tier is the province or state (प्रदेश). There are seven provinces.
Each province has its own government. It has a legislature and an executive. It uses the powers that the Constitution gives it. It uses them inside its own territory.
A province is a real tier of self-rule. It is not just a branch of the centre. It gets its authority directly from the Constitution. The federal government cannot simply abolish it.
The province stands between two other levels. The national government handles matters of concern to the whole country. The local governments handle matters at the village and town level. The province handles regional affairs. So the citizen has a regional government for regional matters.
The head of the province is the Governor (प्रदेश प्रमुख). The President appoints the Governor. The Governor is mostly a constitutional (ceremonial) head. The Governor acts on the advice of the provincial Council of Ministers. The Governor also represents the federation in the province.
There is a useful parallel to remember. The President is to the federation what the Governor is to the province. Both are symbolic heads. Neither is the real decision-maker.
The provincial executive is the Provincial Council of Ministers (प्रदेश मन्त्रिपरिषद्). The Chief Minister (मुख्यमन्त्री) heads it. The Governor appoints the Chief Minister. The Chief Minister is the leader of the party or coalition that has a majority in the Provincial Assembly. The Governor appoints the other ministers. The Governor does this on the Chief Minister's recommendation.
The provincial executive is collectively responsible to the Provincial Assembly. This means all ministers answer together to the Assembly. The Assembly can remove the executive by a vote of no confidence. This mirrors the parliamentary system at the centre.
The provincial executive has several functions.
For example, a province may plan and build provincial roads. It may also run provincial programmes in health or agriculture. These are matters that are regional. They are not purely national. They are not purely local.
The provincial legislature is the Provincial Assembly (प्रदेश सभा). It is unicameral. This means it has a single house. It has several functions.
Its members are elected for a term of five years. The assembly is unicameral. So there is no upper house at the provincial level. This makes provincial law-making simpler and quicker than the two-house process at the centre.
Members of the Provincial Assembly are elected through a mixed electoral system. It combines two methods.
The first method is first-past-the-post. Voters directly elect one member from each constituency. The second method is proportional representation. Seats are given to parties in proportion to the votes they receive.
The mixed system is deliberate. It has a clear purpose. The first-past-the-post seats give each locality a representative it chose directly. The proportional seats make the assembly inclusive. They bring in women, Dalits, indigenous peoples and other groups. This fits the inclusive character of the Constitution of Nepal 2015.
Here is an example. Suppose a party wins many constituency seats. But its candidates come mostly from one social group. The proportional seats help fix the balance. The assembly as a whole then reflects the diversity of the province's people.
The Election Commission conducts these elections. The normal term of a Provincial Assembly is five years. But it may be dissolved earlier. This leads to a fresh (mid-term) election. It can only happen in the situations that the Constitution allows. One example is when no party or coalition can command a stable majority.