President Ramchandra Paudel on Wednesday authenticated the Citizenship Bill, which former president Bidhya Devi Bhandari had kept on hold, but not without creating a stir among legal experts, political parties and the common people at large.

While the former head of state was ridiculed for not signing into law the bill that had been passed twice by the then parliament, the incumbent President has drawn flak for not following the set procedure required to authenticate the bill. President Paudel signed the bill after the Council of Ministers sent a letter urging him to do so, instead of by the new parliament.

The bill has enabled children of citizens by birth and single Nepali mothers to obtain Nepali citizenship by descent. Members of gender and sexual minority will also get their citizenship with their identity while children of Nepali women married to foreign nationals can also apply for Nepali citizenship now. Non-resident Nepalis will also be able to obtain Nepali citizenship.

Before the promulgation of the constitution in 2015, there were 190,726 individuals who had acquired Nepali citizenship certificates by birth. About half a million children born from these citizens by birth are now eligible for citizenship by descent as per the constitutional provisions. Another 680,000 children born to Nepali mothers whose fathers cannot be traced are also eligible for citizenship by descent.

The bill had been under discussion in the House of Representatives since 2019 but could not be endorsed due to differences among the parties over some provisions of the bill, including the waiting period for naturalised citizenship for foreign women married toNepali men. However, after it was approved, then president Bhandari refused to sign the bill on the ground that it was in conflict with the constitution, and it violated the rules and procedures. Failure to authenticate the bill had rendered it null and void.

Leaving so many individuals stateless is doing gross injustice to them. However, there is a process for everything, and it needs to be followed. The presidential pardon last week of Resham Chaudhary, who was serving a life sentence for the Tikapur carnage in August 2015, was also done at the bidding of the council of ministers. Why couldn't the President wait for the full verdict of the Supreme Court that had upheld the lower court's decision to sentence Chaudhary to life imprisonment just a week before his pardon? What will become of the rule of law if the President is to authenticate all decisions taken by respective governments to suit party interests under pressure? By circumventing the new parliament in sending the citizenship bill to the President, the government has also curtailed its prerogative to hold a discussion on it. Some new parties in the parliament have become quite vocal and have differing views on different issues. The Rastriya Swatantra Party, for instance, seems to have certain reservations on the citizenship bill or the pardoning of Chaudhary. There was no need to hurry and authenticate the Citizenship Bill on the very day of Prime Minister Prachanda's visit to India. It could have been done smoothly through the parliament without any hiccup.

Bagmati masterplan

It has been decades since the High Powered Committee for the Integrated Development of Bagmati Civilisation was formed to restore religious shrines on the banks of all 11 rivers and rivulets flowing through the Kathmandu Valley. But a masterplan for the integrated development of Bagmati civilisation has yet to come into force. After spending so many years, the committee has said it is preparing a 20- year masterplan, which will be completed by 2043 if everything goes according to plan.

As per the initial draft, both sides of all the rivers will have sewerage systems, corridors, cleaning of the rivers and beautification of the sidewalks. The government had come up with a five-year Bagmati Action Plan in 2009, and the masterplan will be a revised version of the Action Plan, which has yet to be fully implemented. One of the biggest challenges the committee has been facing is the occupation of the banks of all the rivers by landless squatters, who have refused to vacate the spaces despite the concerned municipalities' efforts to evict them from there. Kathmandu Metropolitan City Mayor Balen Shah had tried to evict them from the river banks, but has failed to do so, mainly due to non-cooperation from the federal government.

A version of this article appears in the print on June 2, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.