The new proposal stipulates that the foreign national, irrespective of gender, should stay in Nepal continuously for 15 years after getting married to a Nepali citizen to be eligible to apply for citizenship. The current Act guarantees citizenship to a foreign woman immediately after she is married to a Nepali man but a foreign man married to a Nepali woman does not qualify for citizenship. We at Republica welcome the proposal with open arms.
Meanwhile, we also endorse the Sub-Committee’s proposal to include a provision to investigate and, if need be, invalidate previously-issued citizenship. Among other reasons, this proposal is significant particularly because there have been a lot of complaints that thousands of non-Nepalis were awarded citizenship following the inclusion of a provision in the Nepal Citizenship Act 2006 that made persons born within the territory of Nepal before the end of April 15, 1990 eligible for Nepali nationality (the Sub-Committee has also proposed scrapping this provision from the Act). Following the endorsement of Nepal Citizenship Act 2006, 2.4 million people, mostly from the Tarai belt, were given citizenship certificates.
We hold the view that while every rightful Nepali citizen should be able to avail citizenship certificates without any hassle or delay, certificates issued to non-Nepalis should immediately be withdrawn. We also urge the political parties and their leaders not to politicize the issue and play a supporting role in weeding out Nepalis from non-Nepalis and in making the entire process foolproof. To end on a positive note, it’s good to see that though our parties disagree on a lot of citizenship-related provisions, they all agree that the citizenship-issuing process needs to be tightened. We only hope that they are not doing mere lip service and will walk the talk.
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