"Naksa pass" — getting your building drawings approved by the municipality — is the least glamorous part of building a house, and one of the most important. A house without an approved naksa has no legal existence: you cannot get a completion certificate, bank financing against it is difficult, and selling it later becomes a problem.

What the municipality checks

Municipal review is not bureaucracy for its own sake. The office checks that your design respects:

  • Setbacks — minimum distances from the road, river, high-tension lines, and neighbouring plots
  • Ground coverage and floor area ratio — how much of your plot you may build on, and how much total floor area
  • Height limits — which vary by zone and road width
  • Structural safety — drawings and calculations stamped by a registered engineer, designed to the Nepal Building Code

The documents you need

A typical residential submission includes the land ownership certificate (lalpurja), a recent land revenue receipt, the citizenship of the owner, a blueprint of the plot from the survey office, architectural drawings, structural drawings and design report, and the registered engineer's credentials. Municipalities differ in detail — Bhaktapur's requirements are not identical to Kathmandu's.

How long it takes

With complete, correct documents, approval typically moves through preliminary approval (the "15-day notice" period for neighbour objections) and then final approval. Realistically, plan for one to three months. Incomplete drawings are the single biggest cause of delay — a file that bounces back for corrections restarts its place in the queue.

Why we handle it end to end

We prepare drawings to each municipality's standards, submit them, follow up in person, and answer technical queries until approval — it is service 05 on our services list. Our clients rarely see the counter at the municipal office, and their files rarely bounce.

Starting a build? The approval process should begin before you are emotionally committed to a design that cannot be approved. Start your project and we will design within the rules from day one.