They have begun talking to each other, finally, after months. On the heels of the 15-minute talk that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had with his Nepal counterpart, K.P. Sharma Oli, on Independence Day, the Indian ambassador to Kathmandu, Vinay Mohan Kwatra, held a virtual meet with Nepal's foreign secretary Shanker Das Bairagi on Monday. The meeting was the eighth one under the Oversight Mechanism (OSM), which was instituted in 2016 to monitor the progress of various India-assisted projects across Nepal. The last OSM was held on July 8, 2019.
On the Nepalese side, apart from the foreign secretary, there were representatives of various ministries, departments and agencies of the Nepalese government, as well as consultants and contractors engaged in the projects. A statement from the embassy said that the two sides noted the progress in the developmental projects over the last one year, which includes reconstruction of 4, 301 earthquake-affected houses, out of a total of 50,000 that India has committed to rebuild in Gorkha and Nuwakot districts.
Other projects include the operationalisation of Motohari-Amlekhgunj cross-border petroleum products pipeline, the integrated check post at Biratnagar and the High-Impact Community Development Projects. “Nepal also noted with appreciation COVID-19-related assistance, including the medicines and medical equipment to Nepal by India,” the statement added.
Relations between India and Nepal have been strained in recent months, ever since Defence Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurated a new road to Kailash Mansarovar from Pithoragarh via the Kalapani area. Nepal saw this a provocation, given that it had staked claim to the Kalapani-Limpiyudhara-Lipulekh area and promptly decided to amend its constitution to legalise a new map on its national emblem. The map includes the disputed territory as part of Nepal, even though it has always been shown as being within India.
Ever since, Nepalese leaders have made statements against India, though India has maintained silence and refused to get into a verbal fight. In fact, recently when Nepal got uptight with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar calling Gautam Buddha a great Indian, the ministry of external affairs quickly defused the matter, by saying the minister was referring to a joint heritage and reaffirmed that Buddha was born in Nepal. India, however, has steadfastly maintained that it is up to Nepal to create the conditions conducive for talks.
It is widely known that India baiting was being used as a diversion to take the focus away from the domestic problems within the Nepalese government and the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP). The leadership issue between Oli and his party colleague Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda has quietened down substantially, though there are no statements on how the matter was resolved.
