Legislation Management Committee has the power to frame its own procedure for clause-wise debate
KATHMANDU, AUGUST 28
The National Assembly has sent the citizenship bill to the Legislation Management Committee of the Upper House for clausewise discussion.
The NA sent the bill to the relevant panel after Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand proposed the same. Khand's proposal was endorsed by the House unanimously. The government, which wanted to pass the bill immediately through a full house debate in the NA, agreed to send it to the Legislation Management Committee as proposed by NA Chair Ganesh Prasad Timilsina. The HoR passed the bill through full house debate in just one day.
A few days ago, President Bidhya Devi Bhandari returned the citizenship bill to the House of Representatives, the House of its origin, for reconsideration. The Lower House passed the bill without any change.
Assistant Spokesperson for the Parliament Secretariat Dasharath Dhamala said the Legislation Management Committee had the power to frame its own procedure for clausewise debate. It is up to the relevant panel how many days it wants to take to discuss the bill before submitting it to the full House, he added.
The NA must decide any bill sent by the HoR within 60 days. Dhamala said the Business Advisory Committee discussed the bill and agreed that the Legislation Management Committee should take a call on the bill immediately, keeping in mind the message attached by the president when she returned the bill to the Parliament.
Among other things, the president had asked the Parliament to consider an appropriate provision related to matrimonial naturalisation. The main opposition CPN-UML has been opposing the bill mainly on grounds that the bill does not incorporate seven-year waiting period for foreign women marrying Nepali men for obtaining matrimonial naturalisation. The ruling alliance leaders say the current bill contains more or less the same provisions that the KP Sharma Oli government had incorporated in the citizenship bill brought four years ago and the citizenship ordinance issued by the president last year.
They point out that the president had issued the citizenship ordinance last year without any reservation, but when the Parliament passed the bill, she returned it expressing her concerns on its provisions.
NA member Narayan Dutta Mishra, who represents the Nepali Congress in the Legislation Management Committee, will chair the panel's meeting as senior member of the committee.
The 15-member Legislation Management Committee of the ruling alliance has 10 members, enough to pass the bill. Mishra told THT that the panel would start debate on the bill tomorrow and would try to conclude it in 2-3 days so that the panel could submit its report to the next full House meeting scheduled for September 1. Mishra said the House panel's report could be modified by the full House if the latter deemed it appropriate.
A version of this article appears in the print on August 29, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.
