KATHMANDU, JULY 14
The House of Representatives today held a debate on the Nepal Citizenship (First Amendment) Bill. Lawmakers from both ruling and opposition parties said that eligible citizens had been deprived of citizenship for long due to non-enactment of new federal citizenship law.
Nepali Congress lawmaker Minendra Rijal said that the prolonged debate on citizenship had deprived eligible citizens of their nationality rights.
He said Bijay Sah of Sunsari, Arjun Sah of Mahottari and Preeti Kaur of Kathmandu had not been able to obtain their Nepali citizenship and the tendency to deny citizenship to those people that look different should end. "The narrative that one section of Nepalis has privileges started during Panchayat system and we need to stop this narrative." He said State Affairs and Good Governance Committee inserted some provisions in the citizenship bill that were against the constitution.
The House panel had proposed that foreign women marrying Nepalis could get matrimonial citizenship seven years after their matrimonial ties. Lawmakers from Nepali Congress and Madhes-based parties opposed this provision, but lawmakers from the erstwhile Nepal Communist Party (NCP) (now CPN-MC and CPN-UML, CPN (Unified Socialist) had supported the provision and passed this provision on the basis of majority.
CPN-UML Lawmaker Krishna Bhakta Pokharel said that there was no need to withdraw the citizenship bill as it had settled all issues except the issue of matrimonial naturalisation on the basis of consensus. Why can' we debate about citizenship rules for foreign women marrying Nepali citizens? he wondered.
Pokharel said that the House panel that debated the old bill had ensured sexual and gender minorities could get their citizenship by clearly mentioning their sexual and gender identity.
Democratic Socialist Party-Nepal lawmaker Laxman Lal Karna said that it would be inhuman to prolong the debate on citizenship bill as six lakh people had been rendered stateless. "We should not aggravate the miseries of eligible citizens who have been deprived of their citizenship.
If we prolong the debate, it will be a inhuman act." He said the House panel did not settle the issues even in three years and if the new bill was again sent to the House panel, it could again take years to settle the issues. Karna said that Nepali women marrying Nepali men were getting matrimonial naturalisation only after completing the process.
He said people talk about foreign women marrying Nepali men but the government does not have record of Nepali women marrying foreign men.
CPN-MC lawmaker Yashoda Gurung said the government brought a new citizenship bill without incorporating some provisions of the old bill where the House panel had inserted progressive provisions on the basis of consensus. She said the seven-year waiting period provision for foreign women marrying Nepali citizens was a good provision.
CPN-UML lawmaker Nawaraj Silwal deplored that 1.2 million eligible citizens were deprived of Nepali citizenship in the absence of a new federal citizenship law. He, however, said that the seven-year waiting period for foreign women married to Nepali men was not bad as the provision aimed at giving all rights to such women except voting rights.
He said the new bill did not ensure rights for sexual and gender minorities.
Democratic Socialist Party-Nepal lawmaker Anil Kumar Jha wondered who would take responsibility for depriving eligible citizens for the last seven years. He also said that the KP Sharma Oli government had brought the citizenship ordinance with almost the same provisions that the current bill had, but his party lawmakers did not oppose the ordinance then and they were opposing the bill now.
Rastriya Janamorcha lawmaker Durga Paudel said that Nepal was situated between giant neighbours and therefore, citizenship law should have stricter provisions so that any foreigner could not obtain Nepali citizenship.
A version of this article appears in the print on July 15, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
