Municipalities in Nepal are cities and towns meeting minimum criteria set out by the government. These criteria include a certain population, infrastructure and revenues. Presently, there are 191municipalities in Nepal of which 72 were established in May 2014 and 61 were established on 2 December 2014 by the Government of Nepal among which 7 were new sub metropolitans making total 11 sub metropolitan cities. In most cases, the municipalities are created by amalgamating several Village Development Committees (VDC), thus making it necessary to choose a name for the new entity. This may sometimes be the name of the largest former VDC but usually is a new creation. The listed names are the official names of the municipalities; nevertheless, the former names are still widely used. Municipalities in Nepal come in three levels of self-government: metropolitan municipality, sub-metropolitan municipality and municipality. The first level applies to Kathmandu only, the second one to the cities of  Pokhara, Lalitpur, Bharatpur, Biratnagar, Nepalgunj, Birganj, Butwal, Itahari and Dharan.