Citizenship Under the Constitution of Nepal (Part 2, Articles 10-15): Descent, Birth, Naturalised and Honorary

Citizenship in Nepal is governed by Part 2 of the Constitution of Nepal 2015 (2072 BS), which runs from Article 10 to Article 15. These six articles set out who is a Nepali citizen and how that status may be acquired, re-acquired or terminated, while leaving the operational rules to be filled in by federal law. The two statutes that supply that detail are the Nepal Citizenship Act 2063 (2006) and its much-debated amendment of 2079 (2022).

Article 10 establishes two foundational principles. First, no Nepali citizen may be denied the right to acquire citizenship. Second, Nepal has a single federal citizenship with provincial identity, meaning there is one national citizenship rather than separate state citizenships, but the certificate records the holder's province. Article 11 is the substantive heart of Part 2: it lists every category of person who is deemed a citizen and the conditions for each route. Articles 12 to 15 then deal with gender identity on the certificate, acquisition and termination, non-resident Nepali citizenship, and record-keeping respectively.

Citizenship by descent (vamshaj) is the principal and most secure category, based on jus sanguinis (the principle of blood relationship). Under Article 11(2), a person whose father or mother was a Nepali citizen at the time of that person's birth acquires citizenship by descent. This is gender-inclusive in its plain text: either parent's citizenship can transmit. Children of unknown parentage found within Nepal are also treated as citizens by descent until their parents are traced (Article 11(5)).

The decisive practical question is how the mother's citizenship works when the father is foreign or unidentified. A child born in Nepal to a Nepali mother whose father is not identified acquires citizenship by descent under Article 11(6); but if the father is later found to be a foreigner, that citizenship converts to naturalised. Where one parent is a Nepali citizen and the other is foreign, the child born in Nepal who has not acquired the foreign parent's citizenship may obtain naturalised citizenship, while a child both of whose parents are citizens at the time the child obtains citizenship gets descent (Article 11(8)). These distinctions are the source of long-running debate about whether women transmit citizenship on truly equal terms with men.

Citizenship by birth (janma) is not an open path for people born today. It was a transitional measure: under Nepal's earlier law a person born in Nepal before a cut-off date and permanently domiciled there could obtain citizenship by birth, and the Constitution carries those acquisitions forward. Article 11(3) and 11(4) address the children of these birth-citizens, providing that a child of a person who acquired citizenship by birth before the Constitution commenced may acquire citizenship by descent on attaining adulthood, provided both parents are Nepali citizens.

In short, no new citizenship-by-birth certificates are issued under the 2015 Constitution. The category survives only as a status already held by people who qualified under the older regime, and as a stepping-stone whose children can move up to descent. Operationalising the conversion of the children of birth-citizens to descent was one of the gaps that the 2079 (2022) amendment was passed to close.

Naturalised citizenship (angikrit) is for foreign nationals who choose to become Nepali. Article 11(9) lets the Government grant it as provided by federal law, and Section 5 of the Citizenship Act 2063 sets the conditions: the applicant must have resided in Nepal for at least 15 years, be able to read and write the Nepali language (or another language in use in Nepal), be engaged in an occupation and domiciled in Nepal, have renounced or declared renunciation of foreign citizenship, be of good moral character, be mentally and physically fit, and come from a country that grants naturalised citizenship to Nepalis on a reciprocal basis. A separate, easier route exists under Article 11(7): a foreign woman married to a Nepali citizen may obtain naturalised citizenship on submitting evidence of the marriage and of having begun renouncing her foreign citizenship.

Honorary citizenship is distinct and rare. Article 11(10) and Section 6 of the Act allow the Government of Nepal to grant honorary citizenship to an internationally renowned person, without requiring the ordinary naturalisation conditions. It is a ceremonial recognition of extraordinary contribution to Nepal rather than a route for ordinary settlement. Naturalised and honorary citizens face certain constitutional limits that descent citizens do not, including restrictions on holding the highest state offices.

Article 14 created a category that did not exist before: non-resident Nepali (NRN) citizenship. It may be granted to a person who has acquired the citizenship of a foreign country, resides in a country that is not a member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), and who - or whose father, mother, grandfather or grandmother - was previously a Nepali citizen by descent or birth before taking foreign citizenship.

NRN citizenship confers economic, social and cultural rights as provided by federal law, but not the full political and administrative rights of an ordinary citizen; NRN citizens cannot, for example, hold political office. The 2079 (2022) amendment was the legislation that finally operationalised this provision, allowing eligible members of the Nepali diaspora to apply for the first time.

Parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2079 (2022) to operationalise several provisions that had sat dormant since 2015. Its key effects were to let the children of citizens-by-birth obtain citizenship by descent; to allow a child born in Nepal to a Nepali mother whose father is unidentified to obtain citizenship by descent, provided the mother makes a self-declaration that the father cannot be identified (with legal liability if the declaration is found false); to let foreign women married to Nepali men obtain naturalised citizenship on submitting marriage evidence; and to put the Article 14 NRN citizenship route into operation. Certificates may also use the surname and address of either the mother or the father.

The amendment had a turbulent path: President Bidya Devi Bhandari twice declined to authenticate it, and it finally became law when President Ram Chandra Paudel authenticated it in 2023. Civil-society and women's-rights advocates argue the framework still treats women unequally. A Nepali mother must make a special self-declaration about an unidentified father that fathers are never required to make, and the constitutional structure routes many children of mixed marriages to naturalised rather than descent citizenship. This contested gap between a single Nepali parent and both Nepali parents - the single-vs-both-parent provision - remains the central live controversy in Nepali citizenship law.