New Delhi: India and Nepal on Friday discussed the exchange of high-level visits of the president and prime minister, days after a new government took office in Kathmandu following months of acrimony between the two neighbours over Nepal’s new constitution. Nepal’s deputy prime minister and minister for home affairs Bimalendra Nidhi, who arrived in New Delhi on Thursday,
held talks with Indian external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday. A person familiar with the developments said the two ministers discussed a visit by Nepal’s new Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal to India in the middle of September as well as a visit to Nepal by Indian President Pranab Mukherjee.
Dahal is the former Maoist guerilla leader who goes by his nom de guerre Prachanda despite having joined mainstream politics. This is his second stint as prime minister, having served in the top post in 2008-09.
During their meeting, Swaraj and Nidhi also discussed possible aid India could extend to Nepal to rebuild the country following the 25 April 2015 earthquake that flattened large parts of the country, the person cited above said.
In June last year, India had announced $1 billion in assistance to Nepal for reconstruction activities at a donors conference.
According to a report in the Kathmandu Post on Friday, some proposals for cooperation that India and Nepal are expected to finalize during Prachanda’s visit include the setting up of a state-of-the-art polytechnic institute in Chitwan, which is the Nepalese prime minister’s home district.
Dahal would like to visit India’s IT hub of Bengaluru, the Kathamadu Post report said.
Another item on Kathmandu’s wish list is assistance from India to develop a Buddhist religious tourism circuit. India and Nepal house sites considered sacred by Buddhists and the two countries could jointly promote the heritage and tourist sites that would boost tourism in both countries, the report said.
India is also expected to disburse assistance for the reconstruction and upgradation of Nepal’s famous Pashupatinath temple, it said.
India could also gift a helicopter to the Nepal Army for Dahal’s use, the report said. This in addition to a Dhruv helicopter handed over to Nepal in 2014 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he visited Kathmandu for the 18th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit.
The proposals for cooperation being discussed between India and Nepal come after months of acrimony between the two neighbours over the country’s new constitution.
India-Nepal ties, which had seen a swift warming with Modi visiting the country twice in 2014, cooled considerably after Nepal adopted its new constitution in September last year.
The new constitution was seen by sections of the Nepalese population—the Tharus, Madhesis and Janjatis—as discriminatory and aimed at their political marginalization.
India was of the view that Nepal should introduce amendments to those sections seen as discriminatory. This was seen by sections in Nepal as supportive of the demands of the Tharus, Janjatis and the Madhesis—the latter seen as having cultural and familial links with people in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
That the Madhesis and others blocked a key supply route between the two countries at Raxaul in Bihar and Birganj on the Nepalese side of the border, used to transport most of the fuel and other essential supplies, did not help, with the Nepalese government accusing India of putting in place a blockade.
India on its part said that thousands of its trucks were stranded on its side of the border, unable to cross as protestors were squatting on the road, preventing the movement of trucks. At least 55 Nepalese and one Indian national were killed as Nepalese authorities cracked down on the protesters.
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