A cabinet meeting held at Singha Durbar on Thursday endorsed the directive. According to Minsiter for Information and Communications Madhav Prasad Paudel, who is also spokesman of the Interim Election Council, the directive on distribution of citizenship certificates will be enforced from Sunday. [break]
The government´s decision came in the wake of the Election Commission´s (EC) demand for distribution of citizenship certificates in order to accommodate in the new electoral rolls those who have attained the voting age but do not yet have such certificates.
MoHA has already deployed 305 mobile service teams to distribute citizenship certificates along with health service while it has made preparations to deploy 561 mobile teams across the country merely to distribute citizenship certificates.
(Photo: Chandra Shekar Karki)
MoHA mobile teams will work together with teams from the EC that will register the new voters in the electoral rolls.
The mobile teams will also distribute citizenship certificates by descent to the children of 170, 000 people who were granted citizenship certificates by birth just ahead of the Constituent Assembly (CA) election in 2008.
The EC on April 2 had decided to deploy new teams to begin voter registration with photos and biometrics, side by side with the mobile teams from MoHA.
“The mobile teams will work full-fledged by early next week,” said EC Spokesperson Madhu Prasad Regmi.
According to officials at MoHA, the ministry has already directed all District Adminsitration Offices to remain prepared for the mobile teams and for distribution of citizenship certificates.
Four major political entities -- UCPN (Maoist), Nepali Congress (NC), CPN-UML and United Democratic Madhesi Front (UDMF) -- in the 11-point deal inked on March 14, had agreed to run distribution of citizenship certificate as a campaign in order to update new electoral rolls with photograph and biometrics.
“The directive will simplify the process of distributing citizenship certificates through mobile teams,” said an official requesting not to be named.
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