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Taking oath of office on 15 February 2018, Province 1 Chief Minister Sherdhan Rai inducted four ministers in his provincial cabinet. The number was in no way sufficient to staff the provincial government.
There are seven ministries in the province, including the Office of the Chief Minister. Rai has also been looking after the Ministry of Land Management, Agriculture and Cooperatives, as well as the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure, for the past two years. As the chief minister does not have enough time on his hands, crucial works at these ministries have been affected. But cabinet expansion seem unlikely anytime soon.
The four ministries headed by respective ministers have formulated policies and laws to execute their public duties. But those under the chief minister have been left to the discretion of bureaucrats. It has affected public service delivery as the civil servants are unable to formulate laws and policies by themselves.
“The cabinet has failed to expand even in two years. Without its ministers, Province 1 has become like a person without vital organs,” says Bal Bahadur Samsohang, parliamentarian fromthe ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP). “Now even if the ministers are immediately appointed, the two ministries will have to spend a lot of time clearing a two-year backlog.”
Works related to critical sectors such as roads, drinking water, irrigation, energy, transport, agriculture, poverty alleviation, and land management have been affected in the absence of department heads.
“Maybe the delay is due to pressure from the central government. The chief minister is just filling vacancies in these ministries, without evaluating their functioning,” says another parliamentarian, Lila Ballav Adhikari, also from the ruling NCP.
Absence of department heads has also affected capital expenditure. Not only have the concerned bodies failed to spend budgets, there have also been irregularities, claim parliamentarians.

“There are big irregularities in the ministries that are not headed by a minister. An irrigation staffer in Bhojpur district was recently found taking bribe,” says parliamentarian Ushakala Rai, also from the ruling NCP. “As there is no minister to oversee these departments, employees are going their own way.”
According to Dhruba Subedi, press advisor of the chief minister, the issue hinges on a decision of the federal government. “Expansion of provincial government needs federal approval. As the federal government has not given such an approval, cabinet expansion in the province has been delayed,” Subedi says.
Samsohang also criticizes the practice of getting blessings from Kathmandu to be appointed provincial ministers. The provincial government has been unable to function properly as there is interference from the center even in deciding the names of the province and its capital city, lambasts Samsohang. “Federalism seems meaningless if the provincial government cannot appoint its own ministers. We have to take orders from the center on everything, including choosing the name of the province and the capital city. How can we say the country has adopted a federal system?” questions Samsohang 

While the federal gov­ernment continues to keep the Chief Dis­trict Officers (CDOs) under its control, the internal affairs ministers of all seven prov­inces have called for bring­ing them under the remit of provincial governments. The CDOs under the fed­eral government, in their reckoning, cannot ensure law and order out in the provinces.

Speaking at an inter-prov­ince meeting on law and secu­rity in Biratnagar, internal affairs and law ministers of dif­ferent provinces complained that the federal government was not serious about main­taining law and order in the provinces.

“The officer responsible for law and order should work under the provincial govern­ments. The CDOs may report to the federal government only on matters related to cit­izenship, passport, and bor­der security,” said Gyanen­dra Kumar Yadav, Province 2 Minister for Internal Affairs and Law. “If not, we should be authorized to keep district administrators of our own. The provincial government finds it difficult to function as the CDOs report to the federal government.”

Hikmat Kumar Karki, Min­ister for Internal Affairs and Law of Province 1, said none of the seven provinces would support having two admin­istrators in a district. But if the federal government was not ready to let the CDOs report to the provincial governments on matters of security and criminal inves­tigation, they may think of a second district administrator, he warned.

“Let us agree with the prop­osition of Province 2. The federal government should authorize current CDOs to coordinate with the provincial governments on security and criminal investigation,” Karki said. “Only talking about fed­eralism won’t work. It’s cru­cial to maintain law and order in the provinces. The central government should make pro­visions so that district admin­istrators coordinate with the provincial governments on this matter.”

The CDOs may coordinate with the federal government on issues related to interna­tional border, fiscal policy, cit­izenship, and foreign affairs, he added.

The ministers also asked the federal government to give a clear outline of the role of provincial police for law enforcement.

Province 5 Internal Affairs and Law Minister, Kul Prasad KC, told reporters after the meeting that the provincial government was facing diffi­culties due to ambiguity about the police’s role. “We are facing problems with police mobilization. For the past one year, ministers of all seven provinces have been trying to work out a way to mobilize the police.”

“Maintaining law and order is the sole authority of a pro­vincial government. In Prov­ince 2, we had last year made a law regarding provincial police services. But as the federal government is yet to come up with a federal police act, we have been unable to implement it,” Minister Yadav said.

At the end of the meeting, the ministers issued a joint 10-point statement, calling for measures to improve the law and order situation in the provinces through nec­essary legal and institutional arrangements.

Prompt action by the fed­eral government to clear the way for provincial police act and delegation of authority to the provincial government on matters of law and order are among the major points in the statement. The ministers have also called for law-making and implementation to adhere to the spirits of federalism and good governance.

The periodic plan of Prov­ince 1 aims to raise its per capita income to $1,620 within the next five years. According to the first periodic plan that the Pro­vincial Planning Commis­sion has made public, the targeted per capita income equals Rs 184,680. The prov­ince’s per capita income now is $1,062. Vice president of the Pro­vincial Planning Commission, Subodh Raj Pyakurel, says that the province also aims to raise its Human Development Index from 0.523 to 0.600 in the next five fiscals. “We have introduced the periodic plan with the main slogan ‘clean, happy and prosperous prov­ince’. All our targets are real­istic,” he adds.

The Gross Domestic Prod­uct (GDP) of the province is Rs 550.29 billion at present. Pyakurel says that the target is to increase it to Rs 803.05 bil­lion in the next five years. To this end, the province aims to increase the current economic growth rate of 8.7 percent to 10.4 percent. Currently, the contribution of the manufac­turing sector to province’s GDP is 20 percent, which the periodic plan aims to increase to 24 percent. As many as 200,000 jobs are expected to be created in the process.

Purna Loksom, a member of the Provincial Planning Commission, says other tar­gets for the next five years are to increase the literacy rate from 84 percent to 99 percent and the average life expectancy from 70 years to 73 years.

The provincial periodic plan is formulated on the basis of national plans, policies and programs; Province 1 has focused on reducing income inequality and boosting the literacy rate and economic growth.

Loksom adds that the main objective of the plan is to lay the foundation of advanced human resource develop­ment and an equitable soci­ety by improving the qual­ity of education, health and social security, and to pro­mote good governance of for­ests, environment, reservoirs and biodiversity by adapting to climatic shifts. He further says that despite the delay in passing the plan and mak­ing it public, its policies and programs have already been incorporated into the current fiscal’s budget.

Targets under the infrastructure sector include blacktopping 5,000 km of roads and ensuring everyone in the province has access to electricity. Currently, only 1,544 km of roads in Province 1 are blacktopped.

The province produces 121 megawatts of electricity, whereas demand stands at 240 megawatts. The Planning Commission says the prov­ince aims to generate 1,500 megawatts of electricity in the next five years and sell it elsewhere.

Chief Minister of Province 1, Sher Dhan Rai, says that only Gandaki Province has so far passed a periodic plan and Province 3 has only prepared a baseline report. He claims that although there has been some delay, Province 1 will be number one in terms of exe­cuting the plan. “The provin­cial government will work on the plan’s framework. And it will make sure it is effectively implemented and its targets attained,” says Rai