Danta Nepali, deputy mayor of Tilgufa Municipality in Kalikot has not returned from the US for more than a year. But she still holds the post as there aren’t any legal provisions to deal with such situations.

Nepali went to the US in October last year as a member of a delegation of the Municipal Association of Nepal visiting the country. She, however, decided to stay on.

“She has not returned to Nepal and has remained incommunicado for a long time,” said Laxman Prasad Chaualagain, chief administrative officer at the municipality. “In her absence, work related to monitoring of development projects and the judicial committee, which is led by the deputy mayor, have been affected.”

While the judicial committee work has been assigned to a ward chairperson, the task of monitoring of development projects remains affected, according to Chaulagain.

The Deputy Mayor Nepali case and several other problems faced by local governments have been on the radar of the federal government, which is preparing to address them through an amendment to the Local Level Operation Act 2017.

Having drafted the amendment, the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration is preparing to send the document to the law ministry for its opinion. It will go to Parliament for necessary deliberations and endorsements before it becomes law.

“We are preparing to introduce a provision in the law saying that local government office bearers who don’t attend meetings regularly will be relieved of their position,” said Basanta Adhikari, spokesperson for the ministry. “But the exact provision regarding the number of such meetings will have to be inserted into provincial laws.” The provincial governments have power to make laws regarding the working procedure of meetings conducted by the local governments.

But, according to Adhikari, experts have suggested that elected representatives should lose their positions if they are absent for five consecutive meetings without valid reasons.

Another gap in the existing local operation law is that it does not designate an office bearer to convene a meeting of a ward if the chairperson of the ward concerned is dead or suspended from his job.

“We have proposed in the amendment that the executive of the local government will elect a member as ward chair based on consensus or the executive body will appoint the eldest ward member as chairperson if the four members fail to reach a consensus,” he said.

According to officials at the ministry, the amendment will also seek to make certain provisions to ensure good governance. The ministry has proposed that the local government not be allowed to spend a single penny without getting its budget approved by the assembly of the local government.

A number of local governments, mostly from Province 2, have failed to present their budget for 2020-21 even months after they missed the June 25 deadline set by the Intergovernmental Fiscal Arrangements Act. According to the federal affairs ministry, as many as 17 local governments are yet to present their budget for the current fiscal year.

Likewise, the federal and provincial government will stop providing grants to local governments that fail to hold the assembly for at least twice a year, another official of the ministry told the Post on the condition of anonymity.

In the absence of clear provisions regarding this, a number of local governments have been spending even without presenting their budget before the municipal assembly.

Likewise, the federal affairs ministry has also envisioned the creation of public accounts committees which will hold discussions on unaccounted expenditure of local governments and things done by violating existing legal provisions. “The public accounts committee was envisioned so that the local government is held accountable to such a committee,” the ministry official said.

Another proposal made in the amendment states that the executive committee can take decisions only by majority vote in the presence of the mayor or chairperson of the municipality. The proposal is aimed at making the mayor or chairperson indispensable and responsible in decision making, according to the ministry official.

The ministry also proposed that the local government be required to report to the federal and provincial governments on its activities. “The administrative officer will be responsible for the reporting,” the official said.

Local governments have long been complaining that a lack of clarity in the provisions of the Local Government Operation Act has been enabling the federal government to encroach upon their exclusive jurisdiction stated in Schedule 8 of the constitution.

But, ministry officials said that the issue came to light only after other federal ministries made laws, and relevant ministries need to address these issues.