Education and Sports Minister Sasmit Pokharel announced on November 4 that the government had recovered about 705 ropani of Tribhuvan University (TU) land in the Kathmandu Valley over the past six months. Prime Minister Balendra Shah shared the announcement.
A visit to the Kirtipur campus on November 5 found several organisations and facilities still on the land.
In a Facebook statement, Pokharel credited coordination between the Ministry of Education and Sports and the TU administration, the findings of the TU Land Investigation Committee, the university’s land records and action against unauthorised occupation and use beyond expiry of agreements. He said the land would be used for modern laboratories, research centres, a central library and other educational infrastructure.
What officials say
On the Kirtipur campus, a petrol station on TU land was still operating, the Nepal Premier League was continuing at the university cricket ground and Laboratory Secondary School was open. TU Registrar Dr Rabindra Shiwakoti said land had been returned in principle but the process was incomplete in practice. He said professors’ organisations, employees’ organisations, the Agriculture and Horticulture Centre, a nursery and Melamchi Water Supply had written that they were willing to return land, and that TU still had to send acknowledgement letters, which he called technical formalities.
Shiwakoti said the petrol station’s relocation was taking longer because it sits beside a road, talks continued with the Ayurveda Research and Training Centre, TU was preparing to bring the Laboratory Secondary School under its Faculty of Education, and an agreement was to be reached with the Cricket Association of Nepal over the ground.
A Registrar’s Office employee said no formal decision had reclaimed the land. Another TU official said not even one ropani had actually been returned and asked whether expired agreements or correspondence had been counted. Student representatives asked for a list of the parcels.
Neither the government nor TU has published a parcel-by-parcel inventory or handover documents, so it is not clear what is counted as recovered: land vacated, land whose occupants agreed to leave, expired leases, or land with correspondence under way. The 705 ropani is about 35.9 hectares.
The scale of the problem
A TU Land and Immovable Property Investigation Committee found that the government acquired about 5,218 ropani for the university in 1956 and 1973, of which about 2,539 ropani was encroached on, reduced or misused.
This included 1,843 ropani at the Kirtipur campus and 696 ropani outside it. About 843 ropani at the central campus was used by 21 organisations. The committee also blamed failures within the university, including outdated land records, negligence, weak coordination with government bodies, political pressure and lack of fencing, and recommended investigation by the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) and the Central Investigation Bureau.
Not every occupant is an illegal one, as some received land through university or government decisions.
Land users include the Agriculture and Horticulture Centre (281 ropani), BP Koirala Memorial Planetarium (150), Laboratory Secondary School (108), the Ayurveda Research and Training Centre (30), the Kathmandu Valley Water Supply Management Board (24), Radha Soami Satsang Beas Nepal (13), the Nepal Professors Association (13), Nepal Netra Jyoti Sangh (10) and United Builders (10). The cricket ground covers about 76 ropani under 1997 and 1998 agreements with the Cricket Association of Nepal. The committee recommended that the school’s 108 ropani be returned to TU and that officials involved in the disputed decisions be investigated.
How the process unfolded
The committee was formed in May 2024 and submitted its report on December 17, 2024. The government made it public on October 12, 2025, and the CIAA said on November 13, 2025 that it had begun examining the matter.
TU’s executive council decided on April 6, 2026 to reclaim the land, and on April 17 it published a notice asking unauthorised users to vacate within 35 days. Letters went to organisations on April 24. In April, recovery was reported to be stalled by objections from staff and professors’ associations, delays and the need for government support.
