You need a photocopy of your Nagarikta (citizenship card) for almost every official transaction in Nepal — opening a bank account, applying for a passport, school admissions, marriage registration, property documents, even buying a SIM. The instructions are almost never written down. Everyone just "knows" what the photocopy should look like, which is a problem if you don't already know.
This guide collects the unwritten conventions in one place.
The standard format
For ~95% of use cases, the accepted format is:
- Front and back of the citizenship card on a single A4 page.
- Both images on the same side (don't print front on one page and back on another).
- Original size — the photocopy should look the same size as the actual card, not zoomed in or out.
- Portrait orientation of the A4 page.
- Centered roughly in the upper half, with empty space below for the office to stamp/sign.
That's it. No specific dimensions written into the rules — but offices will reject layouts that deviate significantly.
Why the layout matters
The empty bottom half isn't decorative. It's where:
- The notary stamps "सही नक्कल" (true copy) and signs.
- You sign as the submitter.
- Date and office seal go.
If you fill the entire A4 with the card images, there's nowhere for these stamps. You'll be sent back to redo it.
Two common layouts
Vertical (stacked)
+----------------+
| FRONT IMAGE |
+----------------+
| BACK IMAGE |
+----------------+
| |
| (stamp area) |
| |
+----------------+
Front on top, back below, stamps below that. Most common. Used by banks, schools, government offices.
Horizontal (side-by-side)
+--------+--------+
| FRONT | BACK |
+--------+--------+
| |
| (stamp area) |
| |
+-----------------+
Front on left, back on right. Less common, but accepted by most offices. Slightly easier to read since both sides are visible without scrolling on screen.
When in doubt, use vertical. It's what most offices expect.
Image dimensions
The actual Nepali citizenship card is roughly 85 × 55mm (similar to a credit card). At standard A4 layout, each side should be printed at this physical size, which means:
- At 150 DPI: ~500 × 325 pixels per side
- At 300 DPI: ~1000 × 650 pixels per side
Don't enlarge the card beyond its real size — offices will sometimes reject "blown up" photocopies as suspicious.
File format
For digital submissions:
- PDF preferred. It locks the layout so the office sees exactly what you laid out.
- JPG accepted by most online portals. Use for email attachments where the recipient might not have a PDF viewer.
- PNG works but produces unnecessarily large files for photographs of cards.
For physical printing, any format works — just send it to a print shop with clear instructions.
File size for online portals
Many Nepali e-government portals limit citizenship-document uploads to 200KB or 500KB. A naive scan can easily be 5MB. To hit the limit:
- Scan or photograph each side at adequate resolution (300 DPI is plenty).
- Crop tightly to remove background.
- Compose both sides on a single A4 page.
- Export as PDF with image quality 80-85 — usually lands around 200-400KB.
The Citizenship PDF Maker tool handles all four steps, including a "target file size" option that binary-searches JPEG quality until your output is under whatever KB limit the portal demands.
Common rejection reasons
Offices most commonly reject citizenship photocopies for:
- Cards photographed at an angle — straighten and crop before submitting.
- Glare from a phone flash — turn off flash, use natural light, retake.
- Card enlarged to fill the page — print at original size.
- No empty space for stamps — leave the bottom half blank.
- Both sides on different pages — combine on one A4.
- Wrong orientation — portrait, not landscape, for A4.
- Faded photocopy of a photocopy — always scan/photograph the original card.
TL;DR
One A4 page, both sides of the card at original size, stacked vertically in the upper half, empty space below for stamps. Export as PDF, target ~200KB. Use the Citizenship PDF Maker if you want this done in three clicks.