Citizenship on Mother’s Name: Numbers Tell a New Story

For decades, the identity of a Nepali citizen was a matter of lineage, a legal inheritance passed down exclusively through the father. A child’s claim to nationality rested on the name of one parent, leaving mothers—the bearers of the same citizenship—with no legal power to pass it on. That legal architecture, built on patriarchal tradition, has finally begun to crumble.

In a series of incremental but seismic shifts spanning the last eight months, Nepal has dismantled the legal barriers that once forced children, particularly those with unidentified or absent fathers, into a state of limbo. The culmination of these efforts is now visible in the data: nearly 3,000 individuals have obtained citizenship through their mother’s name since the final regulations were enacted in early 2026.

The journey to this point has been a political and social battle, marked by legislative maneuvering, presidential authentication, and a final administrative overhaul that has fundamentally changed how the state recognizes its citizens.

The Legislative Breakthrough

The first major crack in the old system appeared on August 18, 2025, when the Legislation Management Committee of the National Assembly endorsed the Nepal Citizenship (Second Amendment) Bill. The principle was revolutionary in its simplicity: citizenship would no longer be defined solely by the father. Instead, a child could claim descent using the name of either parent.

“Our principle is the right to descent,” Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak told lawmakers at the time, framing the shift as a legal acknowledgment of a mother’s equal role. “Until now, descent has been recognised only through the father. With this law, we are acknowledging that descent can also be through the mother.”

The amendment stipulated that a citizenship certificate must carry at least one parent’s name, ending the father’s sole legal authority. It was a move hailed as a progressive step, but it was not without controversy.

Lawmakers like Jayanti Devi Rai, a former committee chairperson from the CPN (Unified Socialist), pointed to lingering conditions that still treated a mother’s right as conditional. She highlighted the requirement of a self-declaration if the father’s identity was unknown—a declaration that, if found false, could result in imprisonment, a fine, and automatic revocation of citizenship. Furthermore, the law maintained a discriminatory gap: while foreign women married to Nepali men faced no special hurdles, children of Nepali women married to foreign men were left in a legal gray zone.

From Bill to Regulation

The bill was a promise, but its implementation required a second act. In September 2025, President Ramchandra Paudel authenticated the Second Amendment Bill, officially amending the Citizenship Act, 2063. However, the law still lacked the procedural machinery to make it functional on the ground. That machinery arrived with the Nepal Citizenship (Fourth Amendment) Regulations, 2082, approved by the Council of Ministers in late December 2025 and published in the Nepal Gazette in January 2026.

The regulations did what the initial legislation could not: they removed the legal hurdles that had made obtaining citizenship in the mother’s name a practical nightmare. The new rules provided the specific conditions under which a child could claim citizenship through the mother:

• If the father is dead.
• If the father is not supporting the child in acquiring citizenship.
• If the father is married to another person and has abandoned the family.
• If the father’s identity is unknown or his whereabouts cannot be traced.

For the first time, a self-declaration by the mother—supported by the new legal format provided in the regulations—became a sufficient basis for the Chief District Officer (CDO) to grant citizenship. The amendment also devolved power from the central Ministry of Home Affairs to the local CDOs, empowering district-level authorities to process these claims without bureaucratic gridlock.

The regulations also addressed the long-standing issue of children born abroad to Nepali mothers. Under the new rules, a child born to a Nepali female citizen in a foreign country—who permanently resides in Nepal and has not acquired foreign citizenship through the father—is now eligible for naturalized citizenship.

The Numbers Tell a New Story

By March 24, 2026, the effects of the new regulation were undeniable. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, 2,948 individuals had successfully obtained citizenship certificates using their mother’s name.

For many of these individuals, the citizenship is more than a laminated card. It is access to education, employment, the right to own property, and the ability to participate in the political life of the nation. It is, for those who had been stateless in practice, an official acknowledgment of their existence.

Unfinished Work

Despite the progress, advocates caution that the battle for equal citizenship is not over. The “self-declaration” clause, while a practical solution for undocumented families, still carries a punitive edge. The threat of a one-year prison sentence and a fine of up to Rs 100,000 for a false declaration remains a sword of Damocles over mothers who have long been marginalized and may lack formal documentation.

Furthermore, the structural gap identified by Rai remains. A Nepali man can marry a foreign woman, and she can obtain naturalized citizenship with relative ease. However, a Nepali woman married to a foreign man still faces a labyrinthine process to pass on her citizenship to her child, often subject to the same conditionalities as single or abandoned mothers.

The Ministry of Home Affairs has stated that the specific formats for self-declarations and other procedural details will continue to be refined by regulation.

For now, the story of Nepal’s citizenship is one of transition. The legal architecture that once excluded mothers from the lineage of the nation has been decisively altered. The nearly 3,000 certificates issued in the mother’s name are not just statistics; they are the first entries in a new chapter of Nepali identity—one where the nation is finally willing to recognize that it is born not of one parent, but of two.