DAO inspecting suspected citizenship certificates acquired by furnishing false details

Amidst widespread reports of major inconsistencies during distribution of citizenship certificates (cc) in terai districts including complaints that those who applied for it misrepresented themselves, District Administration Office (DAO), Bardiya has started inivestigation into 108 citizen certificates under suspicion that they were taken by furnishing false details.

Most of the citizenship certificates under the scanner are suspected to belong to foreign nationals.

The office started the investigation on the basis of complaints that the majority of those certificates issued by Citizenship Distribution Team 2063 were taken by non-nationals.

Chief District Officer (CDO) Shiva Prasad Nepal told Kantipur daily that details of the person on whose name the citizen certificates was issued is being asked from the concerned municipalities and VDC offices.

According to the Office, in the past the citizenship certificates of Malati Yadav, Jaga Mohan Yadav, Jivan Yadav, Baij Nath Yadav, Nanda Kumar Bhurji, Kanhaiya Lodh including more than two dozen individuals claiming to be residents of Gulariya district was revoked and legal actions were initiated.

Meanwhile, CDO Nepal told the daily that the citizenship certificate issued to a non-national Sanjay Singh from his office about three months ago has been rescinded.

Singh is originally a resident of Nidhipur in Baharaich district of India. Locals accuse administrative officer Thirtha Raj Bhattarai of issuing the Nepali citizenship certificate to Singh after taking a lump sum from him.

Because of the open border also which makes movement easy, Indian nationals mainly from Bihar and Uttarpradesh are reported to have taken Nepali citizenship certificates in large numbers. Independent reports have found that some Indian national are even willing to bribe hefty amounts of money to government officials to acquire Nepali citizenship ceritificates mostly for conducting business activities including other contract jobs and some even to get Nepali passports for flying to affluent nations like U.S and Europe. Kidney kingpin Dr Kumar was also in the process of applying for a Nepali passport after acquiring Nepali citizenship certificate by presenting false documents. nepalnews.com July 27 08