The State Affairs Committee of the parliament on Thursday has formed a subcommittee to finalize the procedure in the citizenship bill for providing naturalized citizenship.
The committee has formed a nine-member subcommittee to forge all-party consensus on the procedure to provide naturalized citizenship as per clause 4 of the bill.
The subcommittee includes CPN lawmakers Bijay Subba, Yashoda Subedi, Navaraj Silwal, and Laxmi Chaudhary; Devendra Raj Kandel and Meena Pandey from the main opposition Nepali Congress (NC); Ram Sahaya Yadav from Federal Socialist Forum Nepal; Raj Kishore Yadav of Rastriya Janata Party Nepal (RJP); and Prem Suwal of Nepal Workers and Peasants Party.
The subcommittee has been given a two-week deadline to forge consensus and submit a report.
The parties have been putting different stances on the issue of naturalized citizenship. The Madhes-based parties have been insisting that the current provision of instant citizenship to the women coming to Nepal as brides be continued while other parties want a cooling period of some years.
There are also differences on the issue of discrimination between foreign men marrying Nepali women and foreign women marrying Nepali men.
