KATHMANDU, SEPTEMBER 24
The Ministry of Home Affairs hopes that framing of citizenship regulations will ease the process of granting citizenship to children of Nepali mothers and non-Nepali father and children of Nepali mothers' whose fathers remain untraced and children of citizens by birth.
Under-secretary at the home ministry Krishna Bahadur Katuwal said at an interaction organised by Forum for Women, Law and Development here today that in the past children of Nepali mothers and non-Nepali fathers had difficulty obtaining naturalised citizenship as they were required to submit evidence that they had not acquired the citizenship of their fathers' country. "Often children of Nepali mothers and non-Nepali fathers had difficulty submitting evidence (nissa) of not having acquired the citizenship of their fathers' country," he said and added that the current regulation only required such children to sign an affidavit saying that they had not acquired the citizenship of their fathers' country.
He further said that street children and children staying in orphanage could also easily get citizenship if the orphanage gave details of the situation wherein the children were first found. On the basis of police report and report submitted by the orphanage, such children will get Nepali citizenship.
Katuwal said district adminis-tration offices would seek documents from orphanages on how those children seeking Nepali citizenship certificates were found and where they belonged. Katuwal said the some procedure would have to be followed to prevent any foreign child from obtaining Nepali citizenship.
With regard to the identity of members of gender and sexual minorities in their citizenship cards, Katuwal said that although rights activists were demanding that members of gender and sexual minorities be given their identity based on their feelings, there were some practical difficulties in doing this because identification of individuals involved in crime could pose a legal challenge.
Katuwal said although non-resident Nepalis had demanded that they be allowed to obtain their citizenship from Nepali missions based in their country of residence,as identification of those applicants could be possible from only the districts where they were born or their parents and grandparents were born, the new citizenship regulations required the applicant to obtain their citizenship from the concerned district administration office. NRNs, however, will be allowed to file petition for citizenship cards from the concerned Nepali missions abroad.
Advocate Binu Lama said that framing of the new citizenship regulations would help eligible citizens, who had to wait for eight years, to obtain their citizenship.
A version of this article appears in the print on September 25, 2023, of The Himalayan Times
