Nepal's newly appointed Ambassador to India, Nilambar Acharya, presented his credentials to President Ramnath Kovind in New Delhi on Wednesday. The seat of Nepal envoy was lying vacant for a long time ever since Deep Kumar Upadhyay resigned from the post in 2017.
Acharya, like Upadhyaya, is a political person. He was the minister for law, justice and parliamentary affairs, as well as labour and social welfare in the interim government of 1990. A graduate from Moscow University, Acharya has also served as Nepal's envoy to Sri Lanka. He was a member of the Eminent Person's Group on India-Nepal Relations when his name was proposed for ambassadorship.
Acharya's appointment as the ambassador to India last month came as a surprise given that the left leaning politician had joined the Nepal Congress which is not part of the ruling coalition. The government had first considered Nepal's former chief election commissioner Neelkantha Uprety, but there were reservations with his associations with certain organisations.
The post of ambassador to New Delhi is important for Nepal, given the importance of India to the Himalayan nation's economy and security. However, it remained vacant for long. Upadhyay had two tenures, the first one ended in the summer of 2016, when prime minister O.P. Sharma Oli felt he was plotting against him. When Prachanda became prime minister some months later, Upadhyay was reinstated. But Upadhyay, who is from Nepal Congress, resigned in October 2017 to return to Kapilvastu, his home in the Terai region of Nepal and concentrate on his political career.
Apart from Acharya, envoys of five other countries also presented their credentials to the president. These include Juan Monsalve of Chile, Eleonora Dimitrova of Bulgaria, Asein Isaev of Kyrgyz Republic, Thomas Selby Pillay of Seychelles and Zoran Jankovic of Montenegro.
