van Driem (2001) posits that the Mahakiranti languages besides Kiranti proper are Newar, Baram, and Thangmi.
Matisoff's Mahakiranti includes the Newar and the Magaric languages along with Kiranti.
He groups Mahakiranti with the Tibeto-Kanauri languages (in which he includes Lepcha) as Himalayish.
Bradley (1997) adds Magar and Chepang to van Driem's Mahakiranti and calls the result Himalayan.
After a field visit to Bhutan, van Driem, the original proponent of this hypothesis, collected data on the Gongduk language which made him realize morphological traits common between Kiranti and Newar are not unique to either Kiranti or Newar but a shared retention of a far older trait.