ADDCN - Association of District Development Committees of Nepal

The Association of District Development committees (ADDCN) were founded by the DDCs themselves in 1995. Registered under the National Directives Act, 1961, with the approval of the cabinet, ADDCN is a representative, collective institution of all seventy-five (75) DDCs. The DDCs are its institutional members. ADDCN has a council, an executive committee and a secretariat based in Kathmandu. Each member DDC is represented in ADDCN council, which functions as the sovereign body. DDC Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson are ex-officio members, while other two members, at least one woman, are elected from among the DDC members of the member districts. Generally, the council meets once a year. For tenure of two and half years the Council elects officials of the Executive Committee. Out of 23 Executive Committee Officials, Chairperson and Vice-Chairperson are elected by council members, while 15 members of the committee are elected on regional basis, three (3) for each development region. The remaining six (6) members are nominated by the elected body ensuring that DDC leaders belonging to various minority political parties and women are included. The Executive Secretary General is appointed by the Executive Committee. A person having high academic credentials and national repute in decentralization and local governance areas qualifies to occupy this position. He is responsible for all policy and institutional affairs of ADDCN. In order to discourage partisan biases within the institution, promote secular and objective approaches in decentralization and local governance through convergence and consensus building, ADDCN has established tradition of offering the seat of Vice-Chairmanship to a DDC chairperson belonging to party that has second largest majority in local government.