National 5 (Spotlight Weekly)

Controversial Agreement

A lawyers' forum castigates the government for agreeing to provide Nepalese citizenship to Bhutanese refugees terming it as anti-constitutional

By SANJAYA DHAKAL

Lawyers and experts slammed the government decision to provide Nepalese citizenship to Bhutanese refugees who will not be able to return to their homeland.

At a program organized by the Constitutional Lawyers Forum (CLAF) on August 3 in capital, Tika Ram Bhattarai, an advocate, presented a concept paper alleging that the agreement reached by the Nepalese government with the Bhutanese counterpart about the provision for providing Nepalese citizenship to refugees was grossly anti-national decision.

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"There is no provision in our constitution to provide Nepalese citizenship to foreigners except through the provision of Naturalized citizens — but the refugees do not fulfill the criteria mentioned by the constitution to be able to apply for naturalized citizens," he said.

"If they give citizenship just like that, it will give a seriously negative signal to the outside world that Nepal gives citizenship to all refugees. What will we do when hundreds of thousands of foreigners living in Nepal begin to apply for Nepalese citizenship?"

Bhattarai, in his paper, also accuses the Nepalese government of trying to conceal this agreement from the public view. "They had agreed to this during the last 14th ministerial meeting. But we have not been formally told by the government about this." Besides, he added, that the Nepalese government was also preparing to provide citizenship application form to the refugees. "This we came to know after Bhutanese foreign minister briefed the Bhutanese national assembly," Bhattarai charged.

Speaking at the program, Laxman Aryal, former justice of the Supreme Court, said that the decision (to provide Nepalese citizenship) was against the national interest and unconstitutional. Likewise, former foreign minister Dr. Ram Sharan Mahat and UML leader Jhal Nath Khanal also criticized the government decision.

The CLAF is an association of constitutional lawyers and has been active in debating the constitutional issues of the country. "Basically, its an academic institution. But at times like these when we feel there is a serious threat to the constitutional provisions, we resort to lobbying as well," said Bhimarjun Acharya, president of CLAF.

Lalit Bahadur Basnet, treasurer of the CLAF and a constitutional lawyer said that the forum has been actively working to promote the constitution and rule of law in the country. "We will bring to the notice of general public and civil society whenever the constitution faces any kind of threat," he said.

At the program experts also urged the Nepalese government to seek the help of Indian government to resolve the refugee crisis. "The refugees quite clearly came to Nepal via Indian territory as there is no contiguous border between Nepal and Bhutan. India can constructively help in diffusing this crisis," said Bhattarai.