Citizenship Amendment Bill: Indian mission accomplished
By Our Political Analyst With the endorsement of the Citizenship Bill (1st Amendment-2079), from the House of Representatives (HoR) on Friday last week, the Indian mission of makemaking Nepal the next Fiji has achieved significant success thanks to power-hungry leaders of Nepal who are ready to do anything to regain and reach the power.
Now the Bill is also endorsed by the National Assembly and waiting for the President's approval for becoming law.
If the political parties, including the main opposition party UML, had tried to stop the endorsement of such an anti-national bill, it was possible but they also gave silent approval for its endorsement. The main opposition party, the UML, exhibited double standards in the bill — it strongly criticizes the bill for public consumption but eases the environment for its endorsement from the parliament because the party also is in a race for pleasing Indian bosses. Moreover, the previous Citizenship Bill was tabled by the UMLled government in 2018. The lower House endorsed the controversial Citizenship Bill by rejecting 45 amendment proposals registered in the House with majority votes. The Bill will become law by filling up the void of the law on citizenship, as the House was unable to formulate the law for seven years after the promulgation of the constitution owing to differences among the parties on its provisions. But the law can one day turn suicidal for Nepal. The most contentious provision of the new Bill is that any foreign woman marrying a Nepali man will get citizenship instantly. Earlier in the previous Bill which was withdrawn by the present government, a provision of seven-year cooling period was inserted for any foreign woman tying the nuptial knot with a Nepali man to get the citizenship certificate. But the government replaced the bill that was also okayed by the State Affairs and Good Governance
Committee of the House of Representatives. The government had withdrawn the bill to amend the Citizenship Act that was under consideration in the House for about four years on July 8 and had registered a new draft the same day. The bill to amend the Nepal Citizenship Act-2006 had been pending in the Federal Parliament since August 7, 2018.
Now, the new provision is sure to produce more ‘Sarita Giris’ in Nepal’s politics, because any Indian woman marrying a Nepali man can contest
ean lection immediately after entering Nepal as a bride.
The endorsement of the bill has also paved the way for getting citizenship in the name of the mother. A person who was born in Nepal to a Nepali mother and settled in Nepal can get citizenship in the name of the mother. Citizenship for non-resident Nepali has also been settled. They could get citizenship with economic, social and cultural rights but they cannot enjoy political and administrative rights. But there is fear of abuse of this provision because anyone can get it by producing fake mothers. Parties of the ruling alliance -- Nepali Congress, CPN Maoist Centre, CPNUnified Socialist and Janata Samajwadi Party -- stood in favour of the bill whereas the main opposition CPN-UML, Rastriya Prajatantra Party, Rastriya Janamorcha and Nepal Majdoor Kisan Party opposed the bill saying that foreign women who marry Nepalese men should not be given citizenship immediately. Before the House endorsed the bill, Minister for Home Affairs Balkrishna Khand had responded to the
queries of the lawmakers in the House. He said that the citizenship bill was introduced to address the identity crisis of the people living in Nepal.