The news headlines this week said: ‘The House of Representatives passed the Nepal Citizenship (Second Amendment) Bill that now makes <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepals-unequal-citizenship-law">acquiring citizenship through the mother</a> as equal as through the father.’&nbsp;
Could it really be true? There is genuine confusion or deliberate misunderstanding in the public about the Bill. Here is an explainer:
What is the Bill?
The Second Amendment to the Nepal Citizenship Act 2006 was tabled by the government on 11 March, 2024. The lengthy list of amendments underwent a detailed discussion within the State Affairs and Good Governance Committee of the HoR which presented a shortened list of agreed amendments.&nbsp;
The HoR passed this amended list of amendments on 28 June. While the original Bill contained eight amendment proposals, only three major amendments were presented by the Committee, and approved by the HoR.
Has it become law now?
No. It is yet to be passed by the National Assembly and endorsed by the President.
What exactly is contained in the amendments?&nbsp;
<ol>
 <li>Addition to Section 5 of the Act: ‘For citizenship applications, a father’s identity is deemed unknown if the applicant and their mother both provide a self-declaration stating that the father is unidentified, as per Section 5, even if his name is listed on the person’s birth registration, educational qualifications, or other certificates, yet his other identity is not available and is currently out of contact.’</li>
</ol>
This simply provides a definition to what the Act means by ‘father unidentified’ or ‘father untraceable’. Section 5 derives its authority from Article 11(5) of the Constitution that grants citizenship by descent to children whose mother is a Nepali citizen, but father is unidentified or untraceable.&nbsp;
The Nepal Citizenship Act 2006 and Regulation 2006 (both promulgated prior to the present 2015 Constitution) was amended in 2023 to incorporate the provisions of the new Constitution. In doing so, it included the procedural rule requiring both the applicant and their mother to sign a self-declaration form.
The result: a lot of people who claimed citizenship under this provision were still denied access, simply because their educational or other documents mentioned the name or address or some information about their father. The officials interpreted the presence of such information as father’s identity being known and assumed the applicants were hiding facts.
Read also: <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/no-state-for-women">No state for women</a>, Neha Gurung
The Supreme Court in one of such cases had clearly interpreted the meaning of ‘father unidentified’. In its overarching decision, the court stated the following:
‘It seems neither lawful nor just to compel an individual to accept someone as an identified father merely because their biological father’s name, surname, or address is claimed to be known or mentioned in educational or other documents. It would be just to consider the father’s identity as “unidentified”; if the individual has not received paternal affection or care, and the alleged father has never taken any responsibility, borne any obligation, or been physically present before the children, leading to a situation where the children haven’t even seen their face. Such an alleged biological father should remain “unidentified” for these children until they formally acknowledge them as their son or daughter, or, in their absence, their family provides reasonable proof to confirm the fact and identifies the relationship through a process acceptable to the children, or until such a confirmation becomes impossible.’
Based on this decision, multiple implementation challenges, and growing advocacy around this concern, the government included the above-mentioned addition in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/nepal-s-citizenship-amendment-bill-explained">the Bill</a>.
Is it new?
The proposed addition is neither an introduction of the new right, nor does it provide anything beyond what the Constitution mandates. Since the Constitution itself uses the term ‘father untraceable or unidentified’, the most a legislation can do is to ensure that the constitutional provisions are interpreted and implemented in its true meaning. Therefore, the current Bill only serves to clarify the existing misinterpretation of the phrase ‘father unidentified’.
In a country where about 17% of the population are <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/Comment/stateless-daughters-in-nepal,863">single mothers</a>, this clarification may provide certain relief for those whose fathers name was mentioned in the document and the father is now unidentified. However, the addition does not grant anything new.
The <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/are-women-not-nepali-enough">gender discriminatory citizenship </a>where the citizenship or legal identity of a person is always dependent on one’s husband or father still remains.
Additionally, the current addition does not completely incorporate the Supreme Court’s decision which is broader and more comprehensive, requiring that the father be considered unidentified irrespective of the knowledge of the father’s name, surname and address, if the applicant/person has not felt the paternal affection or care, and the alleged father has never taken any responsibility, or borne any obligation or been physically present before the children.
The Bill only takes ‘father’s name’ into consideration. It does not recognize the mention of surname or address in the applicant’s certificates, nor the absence of emotional and physical presence, and responsibility in their life.
2. Addition to Section 18 of the Act:
i. Unless otherwise provided in this Act, a person dissatisfied with an order or decision made by an official under this Act may file a petition with the Secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs within thirty-five days from the date of such order, through the District Administration Office or directly through Nepal Government.
ii. Upon receiving the report pursuant to sub-section (1), the Secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs shall (must) issue their decision or order after obtaining the report from the official who issued the order or made the decision, within 30 days from the date of appeal, and such decision or order made by them shall be final.’
This provision is already present in the Act itself, and the Bill simply amends or adds the parts that are in bold letters. The positive part is that it makes the right to redress mandatory. Meaning, it not only ensures the right to appeal against the unsatisfactory decisions made by the local authorities, but also the right to receive the decision.
Earlier, it depended on the government's discretion to hear the appeal, but if this amendment is passed, it now becomes the State's obligation to ensure this as a due process of law.
This makes it easier for individuals denied citizenship, by the Chief District Office (CDO), to register an appeal in the higher office, which is the Home Ministry. However, in cases concerning a certain category of naturalised citizenship that falls under the jurisdiction of the Home Ministry, its decision becomes final and cannot be appealed.
This means that Nepal has two categories of naturalised citizenship. One that falls under the jurisdiction of CDO, such as naturalised citizenship to foreign women via marriage relationship. Another that falls under the jurisdiction of the Home Ministry, such as naturalised citizenship to persons born to Nepali mother and foreign father or foreigners who intend to acquire citizenship via stay requirement.&nbsp;
While the former can be appealed if the applicant is not satisfied with the decision of the official, the former, which is the government's decision, cannot be appealed.
3. Addition of Section 22(a) to the Act: ‘Shall provide a minor’s identity card to a person who is under 16 years of age, if either mother or father is a Nepali citizen.’
This provision can be considered as a positive extension of the child’s constitutional right. The Constitution of Nepal in Article 39 (1) states that ‘every child shall have the right to name and birth registration along with his or her identity’. The current Bill extends this right to a minor's ID card.
However, a minor ID card does not guarantee a citizenship certificate, which in Nepal, a person is eligible to apply only at the age of 16. This means: even though the child has the minor’s ID card and perhaps also a passport based on it, while applying for citizenship at the age of 16 or beyond, the person is bound by citizenship laws — which as we have seen is heavily dependent on the father's identity.
The conclusion?
The current amendment does not ensure any dramatic legal reform nor ensure a complete <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/The-right%20-to-have-rights,2656">gender equality in nationality laws</a>, simply because it technically and legally cannot.
When the Constitution itself uses gendered language such as ‘mother’, ‘father', ‘Nepali citizen man’, and ‘foreign citizen woman’, a legislation cannot override it. Nevertheless, recent amendments to the Act, including the first amendment, shows the government’s leniency towards gender equal citizenship laws.
Additionally, Article 49 of the Constitution also recognises equal lineage right of women, meaning that the family descent is legally recognised to be carried on by both genders. Hopefully in the nearest future, Nepal will carry this same principle to shape its citizenship law as well.&nbsp;
A transformative reform by ensuring gender equal nationality rights through constitutional amendment is still possible. Nepal, a member state to the CEDAW and CRC, is still in the list of 24 countries in the world that have gender unequal citizenship laws. &nbsp;It has the obligation as well as potentiality to become a pioneer in recognizing<a href="https://nepalitimes.com/editorial/quality-of-equality-for-women"> women’s equal rights </a>to confer citizenship to their children and spouse in par with men.
Neha Gurung is a human rights lawyer dedicated to advocating for equal citizenship rights, and co-founder of the Citizenship Affected People's Network. A Fulbright scholar, Gurung obtained LLM from the Washington College of Law.

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Full equality vs status quo

<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/2022111413118/637230849c7e80680e0c256ejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="960" height="640"/><figcaption>Photo: AMIT MACHAMASI / NEPALI TIMES ARCHIVES</figcaption></figure>Last Friday, The House of Representatives, through a majority vote, endorsed the amendment to the <a href="https://moha.gov.np/en/post/citizenship-act-2063" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Citizenship Act 2063 (2006)</a>, and on Thursday the Nepal Citizenship (First Amendment) Bill, 2022 was passed by the National Assembly.Since the Citizenship Act came into effect before the promulgation of the <a href="https://lawcommission.gov.np/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Constitution-of-Nepal.pdf">Constitution of Nepal</a> in 2015, it was necessary to amend it to make it compliant with the provisions regarding citizenship in the Constitution.While a bill to amend the Act was registered in the Parliament back in 2018, it never moved ahead as the State Affairs Committee could not build a consensus among parties. The government then withdrew the amendment earlier this month, and registered a new one. The new bill clears the way for the thousands of children of parents who got citizenship by birth to become citizens by descent, and allows Non-Resident Nepalis to acquire citizenship. However, legal experts and activists say that it is blatantly discriminatory towards women.“It still pushes the notion that men are the supreme beings and women are merely second-class citizens,” says senior advocate Meera Dhungana.Nepal citizenship is based on the principles of jus sanguinis or bloodline. While there are neither clauses attached or self-declaration needed when conferring citizenship by descent to a child of a Nepali man, the same is not true in case of a child born to a Nepali woman.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/history-of-female-immobility-in-nepal/">History of female (im)mobility in Nepal</a>, Upasana KhadkaA Nepali man does not even have to mention the name or nationality of the mother for their child to get citizenship. But the mother still needs to navigate the loops of the legal system to ensure their child can obtain Nepali citizenship.The bill does pave the way for a child born to a Nepali woman in Nepal whose father is unidentified, to get citizenship by descent. But there is a catch: the woman must make a self-declaration that the father cannot be identified and if the claim turns out to be false, she can be jailed and/or fined.“The provision itself is an insult,” says senior advocate <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWhV0U5cBMQ&amp;feature=emb_logo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Satish Krishna Kharel</a>. “In a society like ours where children whose fathers are not identified often face stigma and abuse, that requirement is demeaning.”Likewise, a foreign woman married to a Nepali man can easily obtain naturalised citizenship once she starts the process of renouncing the citizenship of her country of origin. However, there is no such provision for foreign men married to Nepali women to get Nepali citizenship.Granting naturalised citizenship to foreign women married to Nepali men has been highly politicised, with the UML along with the Maoist Centre and other fringe parties demanding an interval of a few years before foreign women married to Nepali men are eligible for naturalised citizenship. But the Maoists backtracked, and supported the Nepali Congress and Madhes-based parties to remove that interval period.Read also: <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=18401#.YuNBD-xByrc">Stateless in their motherland</a>, Kunda DixitTo be sure, ever since the first Citizenship Act in 1952 and the others that followed, foreign men married to Nepali women have not been able to obtain Nepali citizenship through their wives. The bill simply continues that tradition.“Whatever the decision, whether to have a wait-period or not, shouldn’t it be the same for the spouses of both Nepali men and women? When a Nepali man can ensure citizenship for their spouse, why can’t the same be true for Nepali women?” asks Dhungana.Moreover, a child born to a Nepali man married to a foreign woman can obtain citizenship by descent, but a child born to Nepali mother and a foreign father will only be eligible for naturalised citizenship — that too at the discretion of the state.“It is more or less like saying that only a father is a true parent, and the role of a mother does not matter,” she adds. The argument against providing naturalised citizenship to foreign men married to Nepali women has always been that if it is allowed, Indian men will flood into Nepal. But that nationalist reasoning is dismissed as absurd by most experts.Says Kharel: “Rather than evidence-based arguments, views on citizenship are based on nationalist paranoia.”Read more: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepal-waits-for-an-unequal-citizenship-law/">Nepal’s unequal Citizenship Law</a>,  Ajay Pradhan

Sahina Shrestha

Are women not Nepali enough?

<img width="640" height="355" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161128/636d18cd9c7e80680e0ac7e5jpeg.jpg" alt=""/>Legal theorists once consigned the idea of ‘statelessness’ to the realm of fiction, because they considered it to be impossible within the state system that emerged after World War I. Every human being was supposed to be assigned a nationality and a country to call his or her own. But the war had created many refugees, and as empires disintegrated and new nation-states adopted exclusionary nationality laws, not everyone was in fact included.The rise of fascism in the 1930s and 1940s further exposed the fallibility of this system and the ominous reality of the state’s power to exclude people or strip them of citizenship. Across Europe, citizenship-stripping went hand in hand with genocide for Jews and other minority groups. Following World War II, questions about the right to nationality, state power, and the limits of sovereignty loomed large in the development of human rights and international law. Could the states that were being created out of the independence movements and diminished European empires adopt nationality laws that excluded entire population groups? Did national governments hold the power to strip their own citizens of that status? Who was responsible for the newly stateless?These issues remain highly pertinent today. Statelessness affects at least 15 million people, and the nationality of millions more is under threat, owing to an <a href="https://undocs.org/A/HRC/38/52">escalation</a> of racially discriminatory policies and rhetoric in many countries. Nationality policies remain a favoured tool of authoritarians, who sometimes use them in tandem with mass atrocities, as in Myanmar, where the Rohingyas have been denied citizenship and <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=23575&amp;LangID=E">subjected</a> to genocide and mass deportations to Bangladesh. Making matters worse, the Covid-19 pandemic has led to even more <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/coronavirus-fuels-fascist-politics-by-federico-finchelstein-and-jason-stanley-2020-05">xenophobic scapegoating</a> and ethno-nationalism, with political leaders like former US President Donald Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán blaming migrants and refugees for spreading the coronavirus.The pandemic also reminds us of the enduring influence that nationality has over our lives. Last May, <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/filippo-grandi">Filippo Grandi</a>, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/press/2020/5/5eb952222ec/unhcr-warns-stateless-people-risk-behind-coronavirus-response.html#:~:text=The%20right%20to%20a%20nationality,on%20policy%20and%20good%20practices.">warned</a>: “The right to a nationality is a fundamental human right and in this time of crisis it can mean the difference between life or death.” When governments prioritise citizens over others in their public-health and economic responses, the stateless suffer. Because statelessness remains a major blind spot for the institutions charged with protecting life and livelihoods, stateless people have been left <a href="https://files.institutesi.org/together_we_can_report_2021.pdf">further behind</a> than ever.Ghosts from the pastAt a time when statelessness demands urgent attention, two recent books provide important lessons about the nature of state power, international responses to national acts of exclusion, and the consequences of failure.Statelessness: A Modern History, by Mira L. Siegelberg of the University of Cambridge, and Denaturalized: How Thousands Lost Their Citizenship and Lives in Vichy France, by Claire Zalc, Director of the Institute of Modern and Contemporary History at the École Normale Supérieure, underscore both the historic scale of the problem and its grim costs. Each takes a different but equally meticulous approach to researching the history of the problem. And both explore how people have had their citizenship denied and revoked against the background of some of the most violent periods in modern history. Together, they remind us that the history of statelessness is a history of crumbling empires, world wars, genocides, and the emergence of an interstate system based on the formal equality of states.Siegelberg’s work is a sweeping survey of international legal and political thought, covering a period that includes WWI, the rise of fascism in the 1930s, the Holocaust, the postwar reconstruction of the international legal order, and the independence movements of the postwar decades. Drawing on a wide variety of archival sources – including popular fiction, case law, correspondence from stateless people to the League of Nations, works of legal and political theory, and notes from negotiations on human-rights treaties – she documents how the problem of statelessness informed theories of human rights and sovereignty.Siegelberg is concerned with how notions of statelessness developed within, and then shaped, ‘the political contours of the modern interstate order’. She reminds us that the concepts of citizenship and statelessness are not static. Rather, the meanings attached to these terms are constantly being reshaped and reconstructed by historic events and shifting power relations.While Seigelberg’s book provides a comprehensive overview of international perspectives and experiences concerning statelessness and the modern state’s power to exclude, Zalc’s work focuses on Vichy France between 1940 and 1944, when Jews and others were denaturalised in increasing numbers to serve the Nazi agenda of deportation to death camps. Her detailed investigation provides unique insights into how bureaucracies in authoritarian regimes produce and reproduce violence.“The other”Siegelberg’s Statelessness shows us that the racial hierarchies that characterised early twentieth-century citizenship regimes gave way not to equal citizenship, as was envisaged, but rather to other forms of racism in Europe. At the same time, Zalc’s book demonstrates how processes of citizenship were racialised with the help of seemingly neutral and innocuous bureaucratic categories and data collection. Under the French Third Republic, Jewishness had been considered a private matter of faith and thus went largely unrecorded by the state. But as Zalc shows in fascinating detail, the categorisations of ‘Jew’ and ‘Israelite’ were deciphered and applied retroactively to stigmatise and discriminate. With a new racialised definition of ‘Jew’, and under pressure from the occupying Nazi regime to identify, count, and denaturalise Jews according to quotas, individual citizen files were scrutinised for evidence of Jewishness.Zalc’s work provides direct evidence of how state power – and sometimes state violence – functions through the routine processes of registration, categorisation, and counting. This was how discriminatory decisions by administrators and judges, on the basis of predominantly unstated racial criteria, ultimately resulted in deportation and mass murder. Denationalisation, Zalc shows, does not only result from explicit discrimination in nationality laws, but also from the misuse of administrative and bureaucratic processes.We see this today, too. National registers or citizenship-verification processes requiring excessive documentation and paperwork are used to exclude and marginalize certain groups. A case in point is the mass disenfranchisement of Muslims carried out by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in Assam – the <a href="https://www.fidh.org/en/region/asia/india/assam-the-biggest-mass-disenfranchisement-of-the-21stcentury">biggest exercise</a> of its kind in this century. An administrative act described by the government as ‘<a href="https://scroll.in/article/948969/the-nrc-is-a-bureaucratic-paper-monster-that-will-devour-and-divide-india">just a process</a>’ has pushed some 1.9 million people to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/magazine/india-assam-muslims.html">brink of statelessness</a>, and many more will follow if this ‘process’ is rolled out nationwide.Racialised categories are also still being applied retroactively to exclude people, including through proxy indicators such as name, place of origin, or one’s status as a ‘dual national’. In Myanmar, where racial hierarchies in citizenship acquisition are explicit, registration and application processes have been fully <a href="https://files.institutesi.org/Towards_an_Inclusive_Citizenship_in_Myanmar.pdf">weaponised</a> against ethnic minorities and political opposition groups. ‘National security’Siegelberg and Zalc highlight not only the potential for bureaucratic violence through the administration of citizenship, but also how this exercise of state power is put to deliberate and targeted use. The archival material examined by Zalc offers a sampling of some of the legitimising rhetoric of the day. In Vichy France, the law on denationalisation was ‘of primordial importance’. According to a 1941 letter by Prime Minister François Darlan, it was needed to ensure that ‘the morally tainted or insufficiently assimilated elements that have been allowed to infiltrate the national community be eliminated as soon as possible’.Similarly, a recent <a href="https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/70213/RSC%202021_23rev.pdf?sequence=4&amp;isAllowed=y">academic symposium</a> canvassing revocations of citizenship from the 1960s through the present (with contributions focusing on Syria, India, Nigeria, and Myanmar) identified a common thread: ‘those targeted for exclusion are reimagined and branded as ‘aliens’ or even ‘infiltrators,’ who the state can and must uncover.”Zalc warns that the inherent ‘malleability of the notion of national interest’ can easily be used to legitimize ‘discretionary power as being exercised in the name of the higher interests of the state’. The revocation of nationality is enjoying something of a renaissance even in some Western democracies, where it is framed as a counterterrorism measure. When stateless people appealed to the League of Nations for assistance in the years following WWI, the world’s first global-governance body received so many letters that it was forced to acknowledge the issue, and to consider whether and how it could take up the refugees’ cause. But, as Siegelberg shows, the response was muted. Firm in their resolve to protect the legitimacy of states and the international state system, legal experts at the League shied away from ‘the messier world of politics’. They preferred to situate ‘the problem of statelessness within the domain of the conflict of laws and avoided addressing it as a wider international or humanitarian crisis resulting from mass denationalisation or exclusionary national legislation’.Then came the post-WWII system, which renewed the ambition to use international law to insulate the modern world against mass atrocities, statelessness, and human-rights abuses, but has proved insufficiently robust. States have maintained and adapted their powers to exclude and denationalize their own people.This is evident even in countries that harbour no doubts about their status as liberal democracies. In 2019, the United Kingdom’s then-Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, summarily revoked the citizenship of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c347vzp58nzt/shamima-begum-case">Shamima Begum</a>, a teenage girl who had run away from home to become the bride of an Islamic State fighter. Since this decision had clear political motives and was taken without any judicial proceedings, a court of appeal ruled in July 2020 that Begum should be allowed to return to the UK to fight the decision, but this ruling was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56209007">overturned</a> by the UK Supreme Court.In recent decades, important strides have been made in reframing statelessness as a human-rights issue, rather than as merely a matter of conflicting laws. Solutions have shifted from a focus on technical legal assistance (which tiptoes around the elephant in the room – state power) to approaches that challenge discrimination and states’ exclusionary powers directly.And yet, the international system still renders us powerless to temper the discretionary power of states to choose their own membership. There is no reliable, effective check against authoritarian states that set out to disenfranchise sections of their national communities. The contemporary drivers of statelessness are eerily reminiscent of the League of Nations era. Ethno-nationalism, security-related anxiety, and economic scapegoating are all contributing to processes of ‘Othering’ that, in the extreme, leave individuals or entire communities without citizenship. And, as was true of the post-WWI period, we have very few effective remedies to protect stateless people.Willful ignorance of the problem of statelessness has provided fertile ground for official abuses historically. Today, we must not look away as xenophobia is institutionalised in citizenship laws and bureaucracies. We must put aside fears of the ‘messier world of politics’ and call states to account for their exclusions – before it is too late for the excluded.© <a style="font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="https://www.project-syndicate.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Project Syndicate</a>Laura van Waas is Assistant Professor of International Law at Tilburg Law School in the Netherlands, is a founder and Co-Director of the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion.Natalie Brinham, a PhD student at the International State Crime Initiative at Queen Mary University of London, is Senior Programme Officer at the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion. <img width="307" height="462" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161128/636d18cf9c7e80680e0ac7e6jpeg.jpg" alt=""><img width="301" height="462" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110161128/636d18d19c7e80680e0ac7e7jpeg.jpg" alt="">Mira L. Siegelberg, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674976313">Statelessness: A Modern History</a>, Harvard University Press, 2020. Claire Zalc, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674988422">Denaturalized: How Thousands Lost their Citizenship and Lives in Vichy France</a>, Belknap Press, 2020.

The statelessness pandemic

Nepali Congress (NC) President Gagan Thapa's candidacy in Sarlahi-4 has thrust this Madhes constituency into rare national focus. If Thapa wins and the NC emerges as the largest party, Sarlahi-4 will send Nepal's next prime minister to Parliament. But if he does not, Nepal’s grand old party will face the next years in the opposition to fight another day. There is a troubling paradox in Sarlahi-4 where the district bordering the Indian state of Bihar has been a battleground for national politicians with fierce electoral competition, all while remaining one of the region's most underserved and underdeveloped constituencies.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260305140344_069cbbc11e971a851b444866dee57f760c0cc611ed40bdf96c627e343e3c0485.png" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="20260305140344_069cbbc11e971a851b444866dee57f760c0cc611ed40bdf96c627e343e3c0485" data-rendition-name="original" width="1802" height="1276" loading="lazy" alt="Sarlahi-4 voting"> <figcaption>Photo: MADHES PAHARA MEDIA</figcaption> </figure>  Ever since Mahant Thakur split from NC in 2008 to form the Tarai Madhes Loktantrik Party, the district has seen rotating political alliances and fragmented votes. Yet, despite 18 years of candidates promising change irrigation schemes remain incomplete, market access for farmers has not improved, unemployment is high.&nbsp; On election day, voters here marked their ballots with fingers stained by dye from the Holi festival the day before. The road leading to Barathawa Bazar was deserted for the most part, except for some youth riding in motorcycles. This is where the high-profile contest between Gagan Thapa and RSP nominee Amresh Singh is being staged. Among the other aspirants is 27-year-old UML candidate Amnish Yadav, the son of former MP Shiv Pujan Yadav. The Yadavs are a political family with considerable caste influence in the constituency. In 2022 Yadav’s daughter Madhumala Yadav received over 14,000 votes here, ranking third overall. Yadav was voted MP from the Maoist party, but defected to the UML this time. His other son is the chair of Sarlahi’s Ramnagar Rural Municipality. Sarhali-4 has 121,012 voters, and the Yadav is banking on the 27,000-strong Yadav vote bank. Sarlahi-4 voter Avishek Sah told us he wanted his vote to go to a young nominee and not someone who has been MP thrice already, like Amresh Singh. &nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260305140344_527c5c2f9aa6a6c7e3bbdfbfe79fdafb0a0b56a62427e9ced86b924c6c563b10.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="20260305140344_527c5c2f9aa6a6c7e3bbdfbfe79fdafb0a0b56a62427e9ced86b924c6c563b10" data-rendition-name="original" width="1200" height="1600" loading="lazy" alt="Sarlahi-4 voting"> <figcaption>Photo: AYUSHA CHALISE</figcaption> </figure>  To make local loyalties even more complicated, Amnish Yadav’s uncle, Harinder Yadav is an active NC member and walked side by side with Gagan Thapa during his door-to-door campaigns.&nbsp; The NC is betting on Thapa getting over 60% of the total votes. Amresh Singh’s tally could be limited to 10,000 votes — that too because of the nationwide RSP wave, and the popularity of its prime ministerial hopeful Balendra (Balen) Shah. “Amresh Singh lost his appeal when he played victim after he was denied a ticket by the NC in 2022,” Harinder Yadav says. Voters we spoke to here agreed with this assessment that Singh did not do much for the district once he got elected in the past, and being a part of the RSP seems to be his biggest asset. “The only reason I voted for Amresh Singh is because Balen is in RSP,” local voter Mahendra Gupta from Barathawa. &nbsp;“This is his last chance to return the people’s trust.”&nbsp; Gupta is aware of the institutional presence of the NC here. The party received the most votes in 2022 local elections, adding that the candidacy of someone as high-profile as Thapa is a positive sign for Sarlahi-4.&nbsp; Other voters like Ruby Gupta are rooting for both the NC and the RSP. “I will vote for Gagan and for Balen,” she says, adding that her FPTP vote will go to Thapa while her PR ballot would be for the RSP. RSP supporters are confident that their candidate will win big because even though many voters may not have openly voiced their support they still voted for the party and candidate. The Balen Wave was not limited to RSP voters, but also to UML candidate Yadav, who said in a gathering that he will be “the voters Balen” if they elect him. He touted his party’s track record in government, and largely campaigned on administrative efficiency, infrastructural expansion, and local service delivery. Amresh Singh ran on the RSP’s anti-establishment brand, promising to fight corruption, challenge traditional party politics, improve basic services such as education, health, jobs, and infrastructure, while pushing for stronger representation and development for Madhes.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20260305140344_982df01801fa7d3532ca0555ecb8a0756e3223be3d93650e08ca82a312dc2ebd.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20260305140344_982df01801fa7d3532ca0555ecb8a0756e3223be3d93650e08ca82a312dc2ebd" data-rendition-name="original" width="1600" height="1200" loading="lazy" alt="Sarlahi-4 voting"> <figcaption>Photo:AYUSHA CHALISE</figcaption> </figure>  Singh’s rivalry with his NC competitor goes beyond the ballot— he allegedly blames Thapa for being denied the NC ticket in 2022, which led him to win the election from Sarlahi-4 as an independent. &nbsp; For his part, Gagan Thapa focused on a more pragmatic development agenda that includes upgrading roads and irrigation, improving schools and hospitals, supporting farmers, and creating employment opportunities with improved governance at the centre. He also promised to build an engineering college in the constituency.&nbsp; Thapa also promoted his own anti-establishment image within the NC, repeatedly reminding voters on the campaign trail that he represents the aspirations of the youth.&nbsp; On Thursday, as voting progressed, there were violent disruptions in two centres where voting was briefly halted. But Sarlahi district police spokesperson Saroj Rai told Nepali Times that there were no major problems. Police in collaboration with the Nepal Army sent the ballot papers to the district’s counting stations, where the votes are expected to be tallied through the night and the winner announced Friday morning.

Sarlahi-4 nervously watches ballot count

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Nepal election live results

As this report is uploaded, the latest results in Nepal’s election show that the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) is headed for an even bigger sweep than most had predicted.
The RSP was leading by large margins in 49 of 165 constituencies, &nbsp;with the UML, NC and NCP trailing far behind. Prominent political figures from the old parties like K P Oli, Minwndra Prasad Rijal, Ishwar Pokhrel, Bishnu Prasad Poudel, Bimalendra Nidhi all seem headed for defeat.
It does look like the RSP’s bell election symbol is ringing right across Nepal — from cities to the remotest districts in the mountains and plains. The party’s blue colour is sweeping the land.
The Nepali people seem to have sent a clear message that they were throughly dissatisfied with the chronic failure of the three main parties to work in the national interest to create jobs and deliver development. It was also an expression of lingering outrage over the the 8 September massacre outside Parliament. &nbsp;
It now looks almost certain that Balendra Shah will get to be Nepal’s next, and youngest, prime minister. Hopefully he will be leading a cabinet of competent and honest technocrats. It remains to seen how the power equation between Shah and the RSP’s leader, Rabi Lamichhane will play out.
Lamichhane is out of jail on bail for fraud cases which he has called political vendetta by the previous regime. Both he and Shah are charismatic and ambitious. Their working relationship will determine Nepal's political stability and whether it can avoid the political cronyism of the past.
This election was not just about casting votes. It was about standing up to principles and a value system, and respecting the hopes and aspirations of Nepal’s youth. It to push for transparent government and against impunity — including for the gunning down of young Nepalis in cold blood.
<div class="embed-block"><iframe src="https://election-geo-dashboard.pages.dev/" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"> </iframe>Live election results as winners of candidates are announced.</div>
CAN DO MAN
Shah got mixed reviews as mayor. He was impulsive and ad hoc, but most people inKathmandu and beyond liked his can-do attitude and unconventional style which stood in sharp contract to the legacy leaders. Over his three year mayorship he showed more maturity and planning capacity.&nbsp;
But he always ran headlong into opposition from the federal government over his urban planning and other initiatives to make Kathmandu more liveable. Coming from a civil and structural engineering background, he was involved in building low-cost housing after the 2015 earthquake.
But his public persona is more tied to his irreverent rap lyrics that stood up for the marginalised underprivileged in society, while exposing the high-handedness and apathy of the state. But this also exposed contradictions because he also used his own municipal guards to beat and chase away street vendors and squatters.
But there is no doubt that a combination of the sharp messaging in his rap videos amplified by the algorithms of social media ignited Nepal’s youth to rise up. It was more about optics and emotion than policy and strategy.
He studied Kathmandu district for five years, visiting experts in every field before announcing his independent candidacy for mayor in 2022. Many like me in his own constitunecy did not know who he was and where he came from.
He is a year younger than my architect son, and I saw in him a reflection of my own son’s commitment to serving the nation. I voted for him to be mayor despite his sometimes erratic behaviour, which could be attributed to his youth.
The best sign of his strategic planning, which unsettled septuagenarian and octogenarian politicians, is the he did not grab the first easy option of becoming prime minister in September when GenZ activists offered him the post.&nbsp;
Joining RSP was a masterstroke, as was his challenge to Oli in Jhapa to project national branding. He needed a party platform and Lamichhane needed a popular prime ministerial persona since he himself could not hold the post.
Shah has shown the capacity to take risks when he believes the value justifies the action for the country. Now, he will have to show more strategic thinking on a national scale, as well as understand the delicate geopolitics of Nepal.&nbsp;
He must rise above the kind of crude social media posts that earned him followers on X, but did nothing to erase his erratic and impulsive image.&nbsp;
Some assume that behind his trademark RayBan shades is a closet dictator, and his past remarks about Hitler are still up on social media. He has in the past shown impatience with criticism, unleashing supporters on social media to troll detractors.&nbsp;
Even so, the public seems willing to place their hope on an educated young man with integrity and a proven record for planning at the helm. By tomorrow it will be clear whether the hope Nepalis have held has been fulfilled, and the coming years will show if the RSP will lead Nepalis to a better future.
The voters seem to have shown the door even to the NC despite the fact that under Gagan Thapa, the party had turned a new leaf. A strong government under Prime Minister Balendra Shah heading a carefully selected cabinet and a strong opposition of the NC, UML and other parties for check and balance may be just what we need for a stable Nepal.&nbsp;
Nepalis have collectively always shown maturity in elections. This time they have given a resounding endorsement for integrity and for good governance.

Bells ring all over Nepal

After Thursday’s election, Nepalis are in a wait-and-watch mode. The Election Commission says counting ballot papers will be expedited this time, and the results for the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) will start being declared within days. In 2022, it took three weeks for the final results to be tallied.&nbsp;
But winning an election is only half the challenge for the parties, forming a government under parliamentary politics is like a complicated mathematical equation.&nbsp;
In 2022, the Nepali Congress (NC) emerged as the biggest party, winning 89 seats. But the UML with 78 seats and the Maoists with 32 formed a minority government. In fact, Sher Bahadur Deuba did not become PM then despite leading the biggest party in Parliament.
This time, there is an unmistakeable Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) wave led by its prime ministerial candidate, Balendra Shah. Besides his own popularity, Shah represents change which most Nepalis are clamouring for after decades of corrupt and feckless coalitions that did not deliver.&nbsp;
The past months of campaigning has seen massive youth engagement on social media through memes, AI clips, and viral images. Digital content that appeals to emotion rather than policy debate between candidates shape electoral outcomes in Nepal and elsewhere. &nbsp;
Shah represents GenZ aspirations, and was their candidate for prime minister. It was only when he declined that Sushila Karki was nominated. None of the political parties in the recent past -- new, old, or revolutionary — have won enough seats to go it alone.&nbsp;
The most recent majority government was formed by the short-lived Communist Party of Nepal after the UML-Maoist merger in 2022. But that rare two-thirds majority collapsed after a power struggle between K P Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal. The only party to have won a majority was the NC in the 1991 and 1999 elections. But it is near impossible for it to repeat this success now, even with Gagan Thapa's rebranding of the party.&nbsp;
We have compiled these possible scenarios for election outcome in order of likelihood:
RSP gets a majority
RSP hits the magic 138 to form a government entirely on its own. Balendra Shah wins Jhapa-5, and becomes the new prime minister at 35, the youngest ever to hold the office in Nepal. But danger lurks: there could be a personality clash between Shah and Lamichhane who are both equally ambitious. History could repeat itself.&nbsp;
RSP wins but does not get a majority
RSP is likely to sweep the most votes, but what if it does not secure enough seats for a majority? It would need a coalition partner and Nepali Communist Party (NCP) under Pushpa Kamal Dahal could fit the bill, but only if it has the numbers. The RSP is not likely to team up with the UML or NC.
The NCP is relatively untainted by the 8 September events, and also has former UML defectors like Madhav Kumar Nepal and Bhim Rawal who could bag their rural vote banks. After all, there are no permanent foes in politics. If the royalist RPP and Tarai-based Janata Samajwadi have enough seats, those could be options for the RSP. &nbsp;
NC is second
The NC under the new leadership of Gagan Thapa could become the second biggest force and form a government with RSP in a power-sharing deal with Shah. This would be the most stable scenario since the RSP and NC have competent and idealistic young technocrats. Thapa himself embodies a strong combination of both old and new politics to navigate the system for more efficient government. But then Thapa and the RSP's Rabi Lamichhane do not get along.
NC and NCP form a majority
If the NC becomes the largest party but not by a big margin, it could join up with the NCP and Ujyalo. Teaming up with the UML would likely face backlash with the party and outside. If Gagan Thapa becomes prime minister he will face internal pressure from both Deuba loyalists. Same old story.
Minority coalition of NC, UML and NCP
RSP becomes the first party but does not get a majority, paving the way for the three legacy parties to cobble together a minority government. While this is possible in Nepal’s parliamentary system, such a scenario is likely to lead to more instability and dissatisfaction among young Nepalis demanding change, and even trigger street unrest. &nbsp;