Nepal on Friday asserted its right to sovereign equality and mutual respect while urging India to receive and implement a 2018 report to review the entire spectrum of bilateral relations that New Delhi also had signed up for during the first visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Kathmandu in 2014.
A forceful case for taking forward that commitment was made by Nepalese foreign minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali during a talk given by him at the Indian Council of World Affairs in New Delhi after raising the unresolved boundary issue during his bilateral engagement with external affairs minister S. Jaishankar.
An Eminent Persons’ Group (EPG) had finalised its report in 2018 but India has not accepted it yet, thereby stalling the process of updating the bilateral relationship that New Delhi had committed itself to in 2014. This has become an irritant in the bilateral relationship and Gyawali did not mince words on Friday.
Stating that Nepal holds “dearer than anything else the principles of sovereign equality, mutual respect and non-interference”, Gyawali said: “We want to see a 21st-century Nepal-India relationship, which is forward looking and firmly founded on equality, mutual respect, justice and understanding of each other’s concerns and sensitivities.
“For that, we should sincerely attend to the issues that we have inherited from the past; address them appropriately and should creatively work out the agendas for the future. With the same objective, we created an Eminent Persons’ Group in 2016 and mandated it to review the entire spectrum of Nepal-India relations and recommend measures to upgrade them in the changed context. The EPG has done its work and our job is to receive their report and implement it.”
One of the tasks assigned to the EPG was to recommend inputs for the review of past treaties and agreements, including the Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1950 that democratic Nepal views as an archaic hand-me-down of the former monarch that does not put the country on equal terms with the larger neighbour.
“We have agreed to revise, adjust and update the treaty to better reflect the current reality and to further consolidate and expand our friendship. We need to do it sooner than later,” the Nepalese foreign minister said.
Gyawali also used the public platform to raise the boundary issue that was prised open in late 2019 after India released new maps showing Kalapani within Indian territory. Nepal came up with a new map of its own, showing Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura as part of its territory though India only recognises that there is an issue on the boundary at Kalapani in Uttarakhand and Narsahi-Susta in Bihar.
Without referring specifically to the particularly bitter patch in the relationship last summer when Nepalese Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli led the charge with shrill rhetoric and actions, Gyawali said building and nurturing trust was essential to any relationship.
“In this spirit, we desire to start the conversation with a view to resolving the question of boundary alignment in the remaining segments.… Finding an agreeable boundary alignment in these segments may not only take us to the stage of a fully settled international boundary but may also help generate a positive vibe in public sentiment as well as help instil a greater degree of trust and confidence in bilateral relations.”
The official statements put out by the foreign ministries of the two countries were at variance on the boundary issue and the EPG. The Indian statement makes no mention of the border matter being discussed during the meeting of the India-Nepal Joint Commission (JCM). Neither is there any mention of the EPG.
The Nepalese foreign ministry, on the other hand, said: “The meeting discussed the boundary matter and expressed the commitment to early completion of the boundary works in the remaining segments. It also discussed the review of the Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1950, submission of the report of the Eminent Persons Group, and air entry routes.”
Nepal has been seeking a meeting of the foreign secretary-level mechanism on the boundary question since 2019 after the Kalapani row, which forefronted an issue that was on the backburner, but India has not committed to a date.
On Thursday, when asked at the weekly briefing if the boundary issue will be taken up during Gyawali’s visit, external affairs ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava had said: “Let me say that the JCM and boundary talks are separate mechanisms.”