Gorkhapatra Sansthan

Gorkhapatra Sansthan, officially the Gorkhapatra Corporation, is Nepal’s fully state-owned newspaper and publishing company. It operates under the Gorkhapatra Corporation Act 2019, enacted in 1963. Although the Act formally constitutes it as an autonomous corporate body and envisages possible employee and public shareholdings, the Government currently owns the corporation in full.

Its principal publication is the Nepali-language daily Gorkhapatra, first published as a weekly on 6 May 1901 and issued as a daily since 1961. It is Nepal’s oldest continuously published newspaper. The corporation also publishes The Rising Nepal, which began publication on 16 December 1965 as Nepal’s first English-language broadsheet daily. Reporters Without Borders describes the Government of Nepal as one of the country’s largest media owners and states that it directly controls and appoints the top editors of both newspapers.

Media assets

Publishing: Gorkhapatra, The Rising Nepal, Madupark, Muna, Yuvamanch

Ownership and governance

The Gorkhapatra Corporation Act describes the Sansthan as an autonomous corporate body. It requires the Government to hold at least 51% of the corporation’s capital and formally permits up to 25% to be sold to employees, with the remainder available to the public. In practice, the latest available public-enterprise reporting identifies the Government as the owner of all of the corporation’s shares.

The Act establishes a five-member Board comprising the General Manager; one director elected by non-government shareholders; one director nominated by the Government to represent its shares; one government-nominated person prominent in journalism, publishing or literature; and one director elected by employee shareholders. Until the two elected positions can be filled through elections, the Government may nominate those directors as well. The Government designates the chair of the Board; if it has not designated one, the General Manager presides. The legislation therefore contains a formal model for limited shareholder representation, but it does not provide an independent nominations body, parliamentary confirmation or an arm’s-length process for selecting the chair and government-appointed directors.

Bishnu Prasad Subedi, appointed Executive Chairperson in September 2021, completed his four-year term in September 2025. General Manager Lal Bahadur Airi subsequently performed the responsibilities of both chair and General Manager from 28 September 2025. On 12 January 2026, the Council of Ministers appointed journalist Govinda Prasad Bhandari, also known as Akhanda Bhandari, as the new Executive Chairperson. He assumed office on 14 January.

Bhandari’s tenure ended in May 2026. The President issued the Public Officials’ Removal Special Provisions Ordinance 2083 on the recommendation of the Council of Ministers on 2 May. Section 2(1) automatically removed holders of the positions listed in its schedule who had been appointed before 26 March 2026, irrespective of the terms originally attached to their appointments. For Gorkhapatra Sansthan, the schedule covered the Board chair and the two government-nominated directors under Sections 8(1)(c) and 8(1)(d) of the Corporation Act. The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology confirmed that Bhandari had been relieved of his post.

The ordinance also amended the Corporation Act so that its express four-year tenure protection now applies only to the two theoretically elected directors. It removed the corresponding statutory language applying to nominated directors. This further weakened the already limited protection of government-appointed Board members against executive displacement.

On 18 May, the ministry appointed Deputy Secretary Rakesh Gurung as the government-share representative on the Board under Section 8(1)(c), pending further arrangements. The appointment was made by ministerial decision rather than through an independent process.

Hikmat Bahadur Rawal was appointed General Manager by the Council of Ministers on 2 July 2026 following an application and shortlisting process. The corporation’s official leadership page subsequently listed Rawal as General Manager but did not identify a separately appointed successor to Bhandari as chair. Under Section 8(3) of the Act, the General Manager chairs the Board whenever the Government has not designated another chair. No publicly accessible decision appointing a new substantive chair was identified at the verification cut-off.

Editorial appointments take place within this government-controlled corporate hierarchy. On 1 May 2026, Bhandari appointed Junar Basnet Editor-in-Chief of Gorkhapatra, making him the newspaper’s first substantive Editor-in-Chief in 21 years. The appointment, made under the Gorkhapatra Corporation Employee Service Regulations 2082, took effect for a maximum term of two years. It became effective one day before the ordinance removed Bhandari from office.

The corporation’s official leadership directory lists Basnet as Editor-in-Chief of Gorkhapatra and Ramesh Kumar Lamsal as acting Editor-in-Chief of The Rising Nepal.

Source of funding and budget

Gorkhapatra Sansthan is structurally connected to the state through its ownership, government appointments, targeted public grants and access to official advertising.

The corporation earns revenue from newspaper sales, advertising, printing and related commercial services. It also receives government grants for designated public-interest activities. For FY 2023/24, for example, the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology agreed to provide NPR 45 million for multilingual and inclusive publishing and NPR 1 million for digitising the corporation’s archive. These were targeted programme grants rather than evidence that the state covered most of the corporation’s operating expenditure.

Financial transparency is poor and substantially delayed. As of the verification cut-off, the corporation’s public financial-statements page contained only audit reports for FY 2020/21 and FY 2021/22, both uploaded in May 2026. In May 2026, former chair Bhandari acknowledged that the audit process was years behind schedule: the Board had only recently approved its response to the preliminary FY 2022/23 audit, while audits for the following three financial years remained to be completed. He also reported approximately NPR 500 million in outstanding receivables.

Editorial independence

The Gorkhapatra Corporation Act does not establish an editorial charter, an independent procedure for appointing editorial leaders or an enforceable firewall separating editorial decisions from the Government and the government-appointed corporate hierarchy. Although the statute formally describes the corporation as autonomous, the Government owns it, designates its chair, appoints or can appoint most Board members and exercises decisive influence over its senior leadership.

Reporters Without Borders states that the Nepalese Government directly controls Gorkhapatra Sansthan’s two daily newspapers and appoints their top editors. RSF also identifies the lack of legislation guaranteeing the editorial autonomy of Nepal’s state-owned media as a continuing weakness in the country’s legal framework.

The current appointment record is consistent with that assessment. The Executive Chairperson was appointed by the Council of Ministers, while the Editor-in-Chief of Gorkhapatra was appointed directly by that chair under internal employee regulations. The acting Editor-in-Chief of The Rising Nepal is listed within the same government-controlled corporation, and no separate arm’s-length editorial appointment structure was identified.

Events during the review period further demonstrated the absence of secure institutional insulation. Bhandari was appointed in January, received full executive authority only later in the year and was removed in May through a government-sponsored ordinance that also weakened the tenure provisions in the Corporation Act. Basnet’s substantive editorial appointment took effect on the day before that ordinance removed the chair who appointed him. These events do not in themselves establish interference in individual editorial decisions, but they show that corporate and editorial leadership remains embedded in an executive-controlled appointment system.

AI and digital policy

Gorkhapatra Sansthan distributes its publications through its websites, electronic editions and associated social-media channels. No publicly accessible corporate editorial policy specifically addressing generative artificial intelligence, synthetic media, automated production or disclosure of AI-assisted content was identified.

Nepal adopted a National Artificial Intelligence Policy in 2025. The policy addresses national AI governance, technical standards, accountability and risks including misinformation and synthetic content, while calling for further regulatory development. It is a general national policy and does not establish a dedicated editorial framework for Gorkhapatra Sansthan or other state media.

Classification rationale

Gorkhapatra Sansthan remains classified State-Controlled (SC). The corporation is wholly owned by the Government, and its governing and editorial leadership is selected within an executive-controlled appointment structure. The Government designates the Board chair, directly appoints two statutory directors and may appoint the directors theoretically reserved for shareholder and employee elections until those electoral mechanisms become operative. When no separate chair is appointed, the government-appointed General Manager chairs the Board.

The Act contains limited countervailing features. It formally constitutes Gorkhapatra as an autonomous corporation and envisages non-government shareholders and elected shareholder and employee representatives. These provisions have not produced practical institutional independence: the Government retains full ownership, the contemplated shareholder model has not displaced government appointments, and the Act contains no editorial charter or enforceable protection against political intervention.

The corporation receives targeted public grants and benefited directly from the 2026 executive decision reserving official advertising for state media. The Government’s ability to provide or redirect these revenue streams creates an additional channel of structural influence even where the exact state share of total income cannot be calculated.

Events during the review period reinforced the classification. The Government appointed a new chair in January; removed him in May through a wide-ranging ordinance; weakened statutory tenure protection for nominated directors; directly nominated a replacement Board member; and appointed a new General Manager in July. The Editor-in-Chief of Gorkhapatra was appointed by the government-selected chair, while no independent process for appointing the editorial leadership of either national daily was identified.

July 2026