Amit Kumar

New Delhi, Feb. 12: A heavyweight Congress delegation led by Digvijay Singh has been dispatched to Kathmandu at a time when Nepalis can’t seem to decide whether India is uncaring step-mother or bullying Big Brother.

The shotgun extradition on the weekend of Amit Kumar, alleged mastermind of hundreds of illegal kidney transplants, has yet again left Nepali pride bruised with elements even within the G.P. Koirala government blaming him for surrendering too easily to pressure from New Delhi.

The Nepal police, who nabbed Kumar at a jungle resort last Thursday, were apparently made to hand over the kidney kingpin sans formality on instructions from Prime Minister Koirala’s office.

They were drafting a case and preparing to produce the doctor in a local court when the express delivery orders arrived; Kumar was driven straight to the tarmac of Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan airport and handed to CBI officials waiting aboard IC 814 to Delhi.

“The decision to hand over Kumar was done on the instruction of Prime Minister G.P. Koirala. My understanding is that India’s foreign affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee had a talk with Koirala asking for urgent deportation,” the Nepali media has quoted a cabinet minister as saying. “This will have serious implications in Nepal.”

There has been no comment on this from the Indian foreign office other than a clipped expression of “appreciation” of Nepal’s “helpful attitude” in delivering Kumar.

Criticising the manner of Kumar’s deportation, Newsfront, a Kathmandu magazine, said in its editorial: “In a ‘deal’ at the highest political level, the government of Nepal dispensed with even the minimal legal and official formality, and quietly handed over Dr Kumar to India… this has demoralised the Nepal police which wanted to pursue its own cases against him….”

Speaking to The Telegraph over phone from Kathmandu, a senior member of the ruling Nepali Congress said: “The handover was hurried through on a Saturday, when our foreign office is closed. Quite obviously, there was pressure from New Delhi and our government buckled under easily. This will do damage to the image of an already troubled government.”

The indignation is probably the more because there currently exists no extradition arrangement between India and Nepal — the 1953 agreement lapsed last year and has not been renewed.

At the political level, though, New Delhi is getting blame for contrary lapses, for being indifferent rather than interventionist.

Elections to the Constituent Assembly — which is meant to formalise the end of monarchy and establish a republican democracy — have twice been postponed owing to political disagreements or internal strife.

There is a sense in the Nepali establishment that neither the government nor the ruling Congress have been “supportive enough” of speeding the democratic process.

The elections have been rescheduled for April 10, and political parties across the board --- from the Nepali Congress to the Maoists --- believe that an overt message from India backing the process will help.

There are reasons for the persisting unease in pro-democracy/republican forces in Nepal, and not all of them have to do with the repeated failure to hold elections.

Although the monarchy is under suspension, there are indications to suggest that Gyanendra Bikram Shah is still manoeuvring to keep a toehold in the power structure.

Last fortnight, Gyanendra sent son-in-law Raj Bahadur Singh on a low-key mission to lobby with sympathetic sections in the BJP. Raj Bahadur is learnt to have met BJP president Rajnath Singh and former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh and sought their support for retaining the monarchy in some form as it was “the only unifying force of Nepali nationhood”.

It is significant that L.K. Advani made a categorical statement on protecting both the constitutional monarchy and the Hindu character of the Nepali nation around the same time.

“These remarks are significant because they come from the leader of Opposition in India who has the potential to become Prime Minister,” said a Nepali Congress leader. “And the fact is that neither the government nor the Congress has done anything to debunk Advani’s stand or distance themselves from it.”

Part of the brief for Digvijay Singh’s delegation --- Veerappa Moily, Jitin Prasada and Shakeel Ahmed are the other members --- will be to assuage such misgivings in republican sections of the Nepali polity. It is perhaps of some import that the delegation has no meetings slated at the Narainhity Palace during its three-day stay.