On Sunday, the Nepal parliamentary committee voted in favour of amending the country’s citizenship act that would place a threshold of 7 years for foreign women marrying Nepali citizens to get Nepali citizenship.
Clause 5.1 of the Citizenship Act 2063 allows foreign women to get Nepali citizenship immediately after marriage while no such provision exists for men. So, foreign men have to spend 15 years in Nepal before becoming eligible to acquire Nepali citizenship.
The State Affairs and Good Governance Committee met on Sunday and endorsed the act with majority paving the way for the bill to get tabled in the parliament for discussion. The 27 member committee has the 16 members from the ruling Nepal Communist Party. Nepali Congress and Rashtriya Janata Party has 6 and 2 members respectively.
This follows the last week’s meeting of the ruling Nepal Communist Party secretariat where it had endorsed the proposal of having a threshold of 7 years for foreign women marrying Nepali citizens to get citizenship.
The committee has proposed to grant residence permit to foreign women married to Nepali citizen till they become eligible for getting citizenship through naturalization. It added that they can exercise social, economic, and cultural rights during the 7 year period.
The amendment also has a provision for allowing women to operate businesses, use or sell fixed and moveable assets or get involved in property transaction.
The Nepali Congress has decided to register a note of dissent and has expressed its dissatisfaction over the provisions. The Janata Samajbadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Party has also sided with the Nepali Congress calling the bill unconstitutional that went against the interim constitution of 2006.
The Nepal Majdoor Kisan Party which has 1 member in the committee called for even stricter provision of 15 years.