Constitution Assembly (CA) member Gagan Thapa, constitutional lawyer Sapana Pradhan Malla and advocate at the Supreme Court Dipendra Jha participated in an hour-long live tweet chat session moderated by the Post on Monday.

“How can the state treat the children of Nepali men as sons and daughters and that of Nepali women as nieces and nephews?” asked one twitterer, Dilip Bantawa, referring to the notorious term ‘bhanja-bhanji’ that the politicians and bureaucrats are known to have used to refer to the children born to Nepali women married to foreigners.

The current laws—both the Citizenship Act of 2006 and the Interim Constitution—allow a foreigner married to a Nepali man to be Nepali instantly while asks the foreigner married to a Nepali woman to wait for 15 years before becoming a naturalised citizen of Nepal.

Although the laws seem flexible on granting citizenship to children on the basis of their mothers’ or fathers’ proof of Nepali nationality, Chief District Officers, authorities with power to issue the citizenship document, often use the clauses on foreigners married to Nepalis to deny citizenships to children of Nepali mothers whose husbands have either passed away or have abandoned the families or are unknown.

The CDOs are known to have asked these mothers to procure proof that the father is not a foreigner. This has left around four million children stateless.

As the January 22 deadline of promulgating the first draft of the constitution looms near, rights activists are worried that the new constitution will enshrine the “and” clause—of allowing a child to be Nepali only if both their parents are Nepalis.

As shared by the panellists, the drafting committee in the CA is currently looking at the provision. Thapa twitted that the official position of the three major parties—Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and UCPN (Maoist)—on the citizenship debate was on the ‘and’ provision.

“Even the Madhes-based parties were for the ‘and’ provision in the last CA,” twitted Thapa in the chat session organised by this daily.

Malla, who was also a member in the last CA, seconded Thapa, twitting that “none of the parties [even in the current CA] were in favour of the ‘or’ [provision]”—of allowing a child of a Nepali mother or a Nepali father to be Nepali.

Despite professing to support gender equality in party manifestos, politicians have often backtracked from empowering women to confer nationality to their children out of fear that Indians across the border would become Nepalis.

“[The political elite] thinks that if citizenship through mothers is allowed, Indians [will become] Nepalis and [will] pose grave threat to national sovereignty,” twitted Jha. “The discriminatory provision [is] targeted against Madhesis and women.”

Responding to tweeple’s questions about what could be done to change the politicians’ mind, Jha said the only way was through protests on the streets. Thapa assured he would “put all [his] efforts to bring [his] party [Nepali Congress]” to eliminate discriminatory provisions from the constitution. And Malla hoped that with enough pressure, political parties would not be able to reject the citizens’ demand for equal treatment in law.

One twitterer, Sanu Lama, asked if “there is a room for deeper reflection in CA on nationalism, national identity and how they impact policies.” The question went unanswered.