Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Mar 24: Nepalese Prime Minister Sher Bahardur Deuba is set to embark on a three-day trip to India from April 1-3. This will be his first official foreign trip since taking office in July last year.
According to Nepals’s ‘The Kathmadu Post’, Deuba has already received and accepted his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi’s offer to visit the southern neighbour. Deuba’s visit to India this time will be the first by a Nepali PM in almost four years.
Deuba will travel to Delhi on April 1, hold talks with Modi and other Indian lawmakers on April 2, and return home on April 3, according to several sources at The Kathmadu Post.
He had planned to visit India earlier in January to attend a business summit in Gujarat. The trip, however, was cancelled after the summit was postponed due to an increase in Covid-19 cases.
Deuba and Modi, on the other hand, met in November last year in Glasgow, Scotland, on the margins of the UN climate conference.
Officials say certain agreements between Nepal and India are likely, including one on a cross-border railway that has been on the table for a long time.
Due to a lack of a legislation to regulate operations, the Kurtha-Jayanagar railway has been shut down since the second week of February. The government, on the other hand, reissued the railway ordinance for the cross-border shuttle’s operation on Tuesday.
The prime ministers of Nepal and India are expected to launch the Kurtha-Jayanagar railway, according to officials organising the programme for Deuba’s visit.
According to officials, a memorandum of understanding on the rebuilding of roughly 137 health posts with Indian financial aid, which Delhi announced in the aftermath of the 2015 earthquakes, is also expected.
Nepal-India ties reached a new low during KP Sharma Oli’s tenure, as a result of some of his utterances, especially on the virus and the Kalapani dispute.
The first step in rapprochement was Indian foreign intelligence chief Samant Goel’s visit to Kathmandu, followed by Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali’s visit to Delhi.
S Jaishankar, India’s External Affairs Minister, also visited Kathmandu in August 2019 to participate in the fifth Nepal-India Joint Commission meeting. After taking office in January 2020, Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla paid his introduction visit to Kathmandu in November 2020.
According to officials, some irritants in Nepal-India relations remain, which Deuba and Modi are expected to discuss during their one-on-one encounter.
