• CITIZENSHIP BILL
KATHMANDU, JUNE 22
The Supreme Court has paved the way for implementation of the citizenship bill certified by President Ramchandra Paudel by vacating its own short-term stay order.
A division bench of Justices Ananda Mohan Bhattarai and Kumar Regmi vacated the short-term stay order issued earlier by a single bench of Justice Manoj Kumar Sharma.
The top court is yet to prepare its order.
The new citizenship act benefits children of citizens by birth and single mothers whose fathers remain untraced.
In the absence of new citizenship law, thousands of eligible citizens were not able to obtain their citizenship and some of them protested at Maitighar Mandala.
Today, those protesters cheered the SC order.
Senior advocates Surendra Bhandari and Bal Krishna Neupane, had, on June 2 filed a petition at the Supreme Court demanding nullification of the citizenship bill that President Ramchandra Paudel signed into law. The bill was pocket vetoed by former president Bidhya Devi Bhandari, which many jurists believe was a violation of the constitution.
Article 113 (4) of the constitution mandates the president to authenticate a bill passed twice by the Parliament. The citizenship bill was sent to then president Bhandari twice.
On the first occasion, Bhandari sent the bill back to the House with her objections and the Parliament repassed the bill without any change and sent it to her for approval but she neither returned the bill nor gave her assent.
President Bhandari's refusal to sign the bill on the second occasion was cheered by some, including the CPN-UML, but many other forces, including the Nepali Congress, the CPN- MC, Janata Samajwadi Party-Nepal and Loktantrik Samjwadi Party derided her action saying the president, who was a titular head of state, had no power to veto the bill the second time and scuttle the people's will expressed by the Parliament.
Those who supported Bhandari's action/inaction said she did the right thing as the bill infringed on the constitution and did not incorporate the seven-year waiting period for matrimonial naturalisation.
The ruling party said the bill contained almost the same provisions that then government led by UML Chair KP Sharma Oli had put in the citizenship bill that was stayed by the Supreme Court.
Sabin Shrestha, executive director, Forum for Women, Law and Development whose organisation had made third-party intervention in the case, welcomed the SC order but cautioned that children of citizens by birth and single mothers may face practical hurdles in obtaining citizenship and his office would start para legal and logistical support for those who may face such hurdles. "Our CDOs are often found to have prejudice and patriarchal mindset so they might create problems for eligible citizens, but we are ready to support the applicants," Shrestha said.
Petitioners Bhandari and Neupane had stated in their petition that President Paudel had stated he signed the citizenship bill into law under Article 61 and 66, which, according to them, he could not do.
They argued that the citizenship bill passed by the previous Parliament had died with the end of the tenure of the previous House of Representatives.
The Cabinet cannot give legitimacy to this bill and send it to the president for authentication, they argued. Stating that Article 113 (1) gave power only to the speaker and the National Assembly Chair to recommend authentication of the bill to the president, the petitioners said the Cabinet could not recommend to the president to authenticate a bill.
President Paudel had authenticated the bill after the Pushpa Kamal Dahal-led Cabinet wrote a letter to the president urging him to endorse the bill which had been kept at Shital Niwas.
The petitioners duo argued that Article 113 (4) of the constitution set a deadline of 15 days for authentication of the bill and the president had no power to extend the 15-day deadline. Therefore, the act of authentication was malicious and arbitrary.
The petitioners sought a writ of mandamus to tell lawmakers to revise the citizenship bill after comprehensive discussion in the House. The petitioners also argued that the open border could be misused by foreigners who could try to obtain Nepali citizenship and render the original inhabitants of the country into a minority.
A version of this article appears in the print on June 23, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
