The Nepal government has decided to draft a new Citizenship bill, replacing the existing controversial bill, which has been in parliament for consideration for two years, after some parties in the ruling government objected to some provisions, requiring foreign women and men married to a Nepalese seven and fifteen years respectively as maturity period before acquiring Nepali citizenship.

The existing bill, brought in by the previous government of the erstwhile Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) in 2018, seeks to amend the Citizenship Act 2063, which allows a foreign woman to assume Nepali citizenship immediately after marrying a Nepali man.
 

The proposed amendments, including one that requires seven-year as a cooling period for a foreign woman married to a Nepali man for applying for citizenship, had created controversy. Now a year-old- government of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has decided to withdraw the bill.

While rights activists had questioned the discriminatory provisions, then the main opposition party Nepali Congress dissented from the bill as it violated the consensus reached by political parties on the topic in 2006 under the Citizenship Act 2063.

On the other hand, the previous government, led by former prime minister KP Sharma Oli, bated for the controversial provisions, citing national security as a pretext. Significantly, Oli’s decision to push the bill through majority votes in a Parliamentary House committee without forming a consensus on sensitive issues like citizenship hadn't gone down well with other parties.

“Since the present bill has a lot of controversial provisions and became the bone of contention among several political parties and stakeholders, the government has now decided to table a new bill that was agreed upon by political parties, including the main opposition, CPN-UML,” Minister for Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Govinda Koirala was quoted as saying by The Kathmandu Post.

The new bill, he assured, will be drafted only after forming a consensus among political parties.

Nepal, which shares a long open border with India to its north, west and east, enjoys cultural, historical, and civilizational bonds with India for centuries. People across the border in both countries have been inter-marrying for ages, which led to the “Roti and Beti ka Rishta” (cultural and marital bond) tag to the relationship between the two neighbours. 

Experts had raised concerns that the bill might hamper or create legal hurdles in familial and marital bonds of border people that they have been enjoying for centuries. There were also questions about the status of the children born of these marriages if the marriage breaks down within the cooling off period.

(SAM)