The government has decided to withdraw the bill to amend the Citizenship Act that is under consideration of the federal parliament.
A Cabinet meeting on Tuesday decided to withdraw the bill from Parliament and register a new one by removing some ‘controversial’ provisions in the existing draft, according to a minister.
“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 told the Post. “The new bill with provisions agreed upon by the political parties will be tabled in the House.”
Despite discussing the bill for more than two years, the State Affairs and Good Governance Committee of the House of Representatives could not build a consensus on the bill, prompting it to take decisions through a vote. The major parties are sharply divided over the provision to grant citizenship to foreign women married to Nepali men.
The committee, through a majority vote, endorsed a provision imposing seven years of cooling period to grant naturalised citizenship to such women after the UML and the CPN (Maoist Centre) had one voice for it. The Nepali Congress had registered its note of dissent on the decision. The committee had forwarded the bill to the lower house with the Congress’s note of dissent.
The government was consulting with various political parties on how to move ahead with the bill.
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