Prime Minister (PM) Sher Bahadur Deuba has claimed that the citizenship bill will be passed within a week.
He has told Janata Samajwadi Party (JSP) leaders including lawmaker Pradeep Yadav that the bill will be passed by the House in a couple of days and a week at the latest.
“I will conclude the citizenship bill within a week. I will bring it tomorrow or day after tomorrow. It will be a week only if it’s late (sic),” Yadav quoted Deuba as saying. “This is not my assurance but guarantee. There will be provision for citizenship as in the past for foreign women who comes after marrying.”
Any woman who marries a Nepali man immediately gets naturalized citizenship as per the current provision. There were talks about keeping a period of seven years for such foreign women to become eligible for Nepali citizenship.
The lawmakers including Yadav, Narmaya Dhakal, Rani Mandal and others also demanded citizenship for children of those who received citizenship by birth pointing that hundreds of thousands of such youths are denied scholarship for study and employment in lack of citizenship.
Madhes-based parties have been demanding that children of those who received citizenship by birth through a one-time arrangement after the Janaandolan II in 2006 should get citizenship by descent. Citizenship by birth was granted to persons born in Nepal before mid-April 1990, and having permanent domicile and been continuously resident in Nepal throughout their life through the one-time arrangement.
