What is Nagarikta (Citizenship)?

Nagarikta (नागरिकता) is Nepali citizenship, and in everyday use the word also refers to the nagarikta praman-patra, the citizenship certificate that proves it. The certificate is issued by the District Administration Office (DAO) under the signature and authority of the Chief District Officer (CDO), the chief administrator of each district under the Ministry of Home Affairs. It is Nepal's foundational identity document: a passport, national identity card, voter registration, driving licence, bank account, SIM-card registration, land and property ownership (the lalpurja or land-ownership certificate records the holder's citizenship details), inheritance, and most government services and public-sector jobs all require a citizenship certificate first.

Citizenship in Nepal is governed by Part 2 (Articles 10 to 15) of the Constitution of Nepal 2015 and, in detail, by the Nepal Citizenship Act 2063 (2006) and the Nepal Citizenship Rules 2063 (2006). Nepal follows a bloodline (jus sanguinis) model rather than birthplace citizenship: in almost all cases citizenship flows from a parent who is already a Nepali citizen, not from the mere fact of being born on Nepali soil. A first certificate is normally issued only once a person reaches the age of sixteen, which is why obtaining one's nagarikta at sixteen is a near-universal rite of passage for Nepali teenagers.

The certificate records the holder's name, permanent address, date of birth, the names of the father and mother (and, for a married woman, her husband), the type of citizenship, a unique citizenship number and the issuing office. Because the same number follows a person through every later document, an error or inconsistency on the certificate, such as a mis-transliterated name or a wrong Bikram Sambat date, can cascade into problems with passports, exams and property, so the details on it are taken very seriously.

The Constitution and the 2006 Act recognise four statutory kinds of citizenship plus a separate, limited Non-Resident Nepali (NRN) category. Citizenship by descent (bansaj) is by far the most common: a person is a Nepali citizen by descent if, at the time of their birth, either the father or the mother was a Nepali citizen. This is the route by which the overwhelming majority of Nepalis acquire their certificate at age sixteen on the strength of a parent's citizenship.

Citizenship by birth (janma) is a closed, transitional category, not an open route. It applied to people permanently domiciled in Nepal who were born before the end of Chaitra 2046 BS (mid-April 1990); it is no longer available to anyone born after that cut-off. Naturalised citizenship (angikrit nagarikta) is the route for foreign nationals: an applicant must generally have resided in Nepal for at least fifteen years, be able to speak and write a national language of Nepal, be engaged in an occupation in Nepal, be of good character, renounce their existing citizenship, and come from a country that offers reciprocal naturalisation. Honorary citizenship may be conferred on distinguished foreigners. Naturalised and honorary citizens face some restrictions that descent citizens do not, including bars on the highest constitutional offices.

Citizenship by marriage is a specific application of naturalised citizenship: a foreign woman married to a Nepali man may apply for naturalised citizenship on the basis of her marriage certificate and evidence that she has begun the process of renouncing her foreign citizenship. The NRN category, given constitutional standing in Article 14 and added in detail by the 2023 amendment, allows people of Nepali origin who have taken the citizenship of a non-SAARC country (and their children and grandchildren) to obtain Non-Resident Nepali citizenship. NRN citizenship carries economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to own property, but explicitly not political or administrative rights: holders cannot vote, stand for election or hold constitutional office. Nepal does not otherwise permit dual citizenship, and acquiring the citizenship of another country normally entails loss of full Nepali citizenship.

The classic case is a sixteen-year-old applying for citizenship by descent. The application is made at the District Administration Office of the applicant's home district, on a prescribed form, and the typical supporting documents are: the citizenship certificates of one or both parents; the applicant's birth-registration certificate; a recommendation letter from the local ward office of the rural or urban municipality confirming residence and parentage; school documents such as the SEE marksheet or character certificate; proof of permanent residence; recent passport-size photographs; and the required revenue stamp. An adult relative who already holds Nepali citizenship usually attends as a witness to verify the family link.

The ward office's recommendation is a key gatekeeping step: local elected officials, who are presumed to know the family, attest that the applicant genuinely resides in the area and is the child of the named Nepali parent. The DAO then verifies the parents' citizenship records, the birth registration and the residency evidence before the Chief District Officer authorises issuance. Because the system leans heavily on parental documents and local testimony, people whose parents lack certificates, who were born abroad, or who cannot easily prove descent can face long delays.

Applications for naturalised citizenship, citizenship by marriage and NRN citizenship are more document-intensive and are decided at a higher level. Naturalisation in particular is discretionary rather than automatic even when the residence and other conditions are met; the Ministry of Home Affairs and, ultimately, the Government of Nepal exercise judgement over such grants, which is one reason naturalisation is comparatively uncommon.

Modern Nepali citizenship law begins with the citizenship legislation of the 1950s and 1960s; the Nepal Citizenship Act 2020 BS (1964) was the principal statute for decades. It was replaced by the Nepal Citizenship Act 2063 (2006), enacted in the wake of the People's Movement, which liberalised several provisions, and the framework was then embedded in Part 2 of the 2015 Constitution. A long-running and politically charged feature of the law has been gender inequality: historically citizenship passed through the father, and although the 2006 Act and the 2015 Constitution allow a Nepali mother to transmit citizenship, the rules have continued to treat mothers and fathers differently, especially where a child's father is foreign or unidentified. Activists and human-rights bodies argue these asymmetries have left some children and spouses effectively stateless.

The most significant recent reform is the First Amendment to the Citizenship Act. Parliament passed an amendment bill in 2022, but President Bidya Devi Bhandari declined to authenticate it; it was finally authenticated by President Ram Chandra Paudel on 31 May 2023, bringing it into force. The amendment created the legal basis for NRN citizenship, addressed the status of children of citizens who had themselves obtained citizenship by birth, and made provisions for children of Nepali mothers whose fathers cannot be identified, among other changes such as recognising gender identity and allowing a child to use either parent's name and address.

The amendment remained controversial. The provision allowing children of unmarried Nepali mothers to obtain citizenship by descent requires the mother to make a formal self-declaration that the father cannot be identified, with possible penalties if the declaration is later proven false, a requirement not imposed on fathers. The provision letting foreign wives of Nepali men obtain naturalised citizenship as soon as they begin renouncing their previous citizenship, without a waiting period, was opposed by parties that wanted a multi-year cooling-off period comparable to other countries. Citizenship reform therefore remains an active and contested area of Nepali politics.

Nagarikta (the certificate) should not be confused with the rashtriya parichaya-patra, Nepal's newer biometric National Identity Card (national ID), or with the passport. The citizenship certificate establishes that a person is a citizen; the national ID card and passport are downstream documents issued to people who already hold citizenship. A common point of confusion is the difference between citizenship by descent and citizenship by birth: many people assume being born in Nepal confers citizenship, but Nepal does not grant citizenship by birthplace alone, and citizenship by birth is a closed historical category, not a route open to children born today.

Another frequent confusion is between naturalised citizenship and citizenship by descent. The two are not equivalent in rights: certain high constitutional offices, such as the President, Vice-President and Prime Minister, are reserved for citizens by descent, so a naturalised citizen does not have identical political eligibility. Similarly, NRN citizenship is sometimes mistaken for dual citizenship, but it is a deliberately limited status that confers economic, social, cultural and property rights without voting rights or eligibility for public office, and Nepal continues to prohibit true dual citizenship.

Related documents and concepts a reader will often encounter alongside nagarikta include the lalpurja (land-ownership certificate, which cites the holder's citizenship details), the ward-office recommendation that underpins most applications, the role of the Chief District Officer who signs the certificate, and the distinction between the rural municipality (gaunpalika) and municipality (nagarpalika) whose ward offices process the local paperwork.