When Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) leader Balendra "Balen" Shah was sworn in as Nepal's 43rd prime minister on 27 March 2026 after a landslide election victory, his government inherited a specific written promise to the diaspora: continuity of Nepali citizenship by descent for Non-Resident Nepalis, restored ancestral property rights, and eventual voting rights — the "Once a Nepali, always a Nepali" pledge repeated in both the RSP's 100-point manifesto and its five-point coalition agreement. Four months on, NRNA officials and diaspora commentators say the promise is running well ahead of delivery, a gap that matters directly to the estimated tens of thousands of British Nepalis holding, or trying to obtain, Non-Resident Nepali (NRN) citizenship status.

The pledge traces back to RSP's pre-election "Citizen Contract," unveiled alongside manifestos from the Rastriya Prajatantra Party and Ujyaalo Nepal Party ahead of Nepal's 5 March 2026 general election — the first in which the government, under pressure following the September 2025 Gen Z-led protests, moved to let NRNs vote from abroad in principle, even though external voting mechanisms were not fully operational in time. RSP's own founder-leader Rabi Lamichhane has personal history with the issue, having previously lost his parliamentary seat and deputy prime ministership over a citizenship-by-descent dispute — a fact diaspora commentators say gives the pledge unusual personal weight inside the party.

But Nepal's 2015 Constitution does not recognise dual citizenship, meaning "continuity of citizenship by descent" would require a constitutional amendment — a heavy lift even for a government holding 182 of 275 seats, just short of the two-thirds threshold needed. Writing in The Annapurna Express in April 2026, commentator Pradeep Bhattarai argued the government could act immediately on something short of full dual citizenship: fixing the existing, already-constitutional NRN citizenship scheme, which he described as bureaucratically punishing — requiring applicants to travel to their original home district, obtain police clearance and ward recommendations often days away by road, pay unofficial "facilitation" fees reportedly reaching NPR 10,000, and still emerge with a document that lacks full recognition in Nepali courts and land registries. Separately, the government has floated a package of diaspora-facing economic measures — a "Supreme Organic Investor" designation for NRNs, an annual NPR 100 billion diaspora investment bond, and pursuit of double-taxation agreements with the UK, US, Canada and Australia — though these remain policy announcements rather than enacted law.

For NRNA UK specifically, the stakes are concrete: property inheritance disputes, difficulty investing pension or savings capital back into Nepal, and the practical humiliation — as critics put it — of former Nepali citizens still needing a visa to enter their country of birth. NRNA representatives have already lobbied Kathmandu ministries directly, and diaspora social media has shown visible frustration at the gap between rhetoric and implementation. Whether the Balen government treats this as a first-term priority or lets it drift, as predecessor governments did for over two decades, will shape trust between Kathmandu and its UK diaspora heading into 2027.

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