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Whose nation is it?
APR 02 -
Despite sustained efforts to make Nepal’s citizenship law more scientific and less susceptible to manipulations, there is no dearth of instances of misuses of the legal provisions that govern citizenship.
A study of citizenship-related anomalies in the past few years reveals increasing numbers of non-Nepalis getting Nepali citizenships and misusing them.
Home Ministry records show that it has scrapped a number of citizenships since 1999. Though the government has not been able to initiate action on all the recorded cases due to “legal and procedural difficulties”, it has scrapped about 280 fraudulent citizenships since 1999.
“Members of international criminal gangs remain at the forefront in the abuses while equally disturbing is the fact that many of those who have received citizenship in recent years have questionable Nepali identities,” said a senior Home Ministry official. “The government has busted a few (criminal) rackets involved in facilitating citizenships, but the misuse has continued unabated.”
For instance, in a recent revelation, Babbu Srivastav, the person behind media entrepreneur Jamim Shah’s murder, is found to have received Nepali citizenship. “This is just one example. I guess there are thousands, both criminal and non-criminal, who have got Nepali citizenship despite being disqualified.” (See list)
Another interesting fact is that all this is happening while the constitutions over the past 45 years appear to have gradually tightened their screws on citizenship provisions.
When Nepal adopted its constitution in 1962, any child with either a Nepali father or a Nepali mother was considered eligible to apply for a Nepali citizenship by descent. This was considered “too liberal” to be able to prevent misuse and some stricter conditions were added in the successive legislations, including the Constitution of 1990. The 1990 Constitution limited the eligibility criteria and said only those children who were fathered by a Nepali citizen could apply for the citizenship. The new constitution, says Advocate Sabin Shrestha, is making it even “tougher”, if the recently finalised draft of the Constituent Assembly (CA) thematic committee on Fundamental Rights is anything to go by.
The new draft states that for a child to be eligible for citizenship by descent, both his or her parents must be Nepali. Much tougher is the provision on naturalised citizenship: While the constitution of 1962 and 1990 state that any foreign woman who is married to a Nepali national will be eligible to apply for citizenship, the draft says that foreigners married to a Nepali will have to renounce their foreign citizenship and prove 15 years of legal residency in Nepal.
Some experts say the new provision on citizenship is “unnecessarily tough” in that it has created hurdles, which could deprive genuine candidates from citizenship rights. “There is no country in the world, except Myanmar, which has such a provision,” says Professor Krishna Khanal, a constitutional expert.
Experts argue that making constitutional provisions on citizenship tougher would not help stop non-Nepalis from getting Nepali citizenship. The constitution, they say, should be as democratic as possible and it is the government’s job to see whether the provision is misused.
To many, easing the criteria for citizenship would be detrimental because its geographic location doesn’t allow Nepal the luxury to be very democratic when it comes to citizenship.
“The citizenship issue should be handled with utmost care,” says Balkrishna Neupane, an advocate who fought and won four legal battles against post-1990 governments’ “unwise” decisions on citizenship issues. “An influx of just one percent of the neighbouring country’s population would increase Nepal’s population by almost double, whereas even if the entire Nepali population is added to the neighbour’s population, that would not make any difference.”
Neupane stresses that the new constitution should not ignore the problems that have emerged from the Interim Constitution’s guarantee that those “born before April 15, 1990 shall acquire Nepali citizenship by birth”. This very provision, says Neupane, is one of the loopholes from which an increasing number of non-Nepalis, including foreign criminals, are getting Nepali citizenship.
Binda Pandey, Chairperson of the CA committee on Fundamental Rights, concedes that the draft has drawn criticism of all kinds. But she also says there are rooms for improvements. “We have incorporated all differing views as notes of dissent, which are yet to be resolved” said Pandey.
However, fear still looms that the CA could end up endorsing a constitution with flawed provisions on citizenship because of the impending deadline.
CRIMINALS WHO GOT CITIZENSHIP
Rohit Barma (Indian national and murderer of Mirza Dilsad Beg)
Babbu Srivastav (Indian national and accomplice in Jamim Shah Murder)
Dr. Amit Kumar (Indian national and illegal kidney racket kingpin. Kumar tried to get a Nepali citizenship but was arrested.)
Ashraf Ali (Pakistani national and arms smuggler)
Subrata Bayen (Bangladeshi national and arms smuggler)
Citizenships distributed
as of June 14, 2009
Citizenship by descent: 16,903,346
Married naturalised: 296,576
Citizenship by birth: 241,499
By Distribution Team: 528
From mother's name: 128
Honorary (Edmund Hillary): 1
Fraud reports: not disclosed
Scrapped Citizenships: 280
Total valid: 17,442,078
Pending Citizenship Applications
Foreign father and Nepali mother: 67
Foreign father and foreign mother: 65
Nepali citizenships renounced: 229
Citizenship application by birth: 995
Posted on: 2010-04-03 09:11
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