ELECTIONS '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Nepal accuses India of wrongly occupying Kalapani

Within days of the state visit to Nepal of President K R Narayanan, sentiments in Nepal have taken on a distinctly anti-Indian flavour, with the resurfacing of a two-year-old simmering border dispute.

The bone of contention is Kalapani, a 35 square km piece of land which both New Delhi and Kathmandu claim as their own. An Indo-Nepal joint working group is currently engaged in resolving the issue through expert-level discussions and during two meetings so far it has browsed over historical land records and map surveys to settle the matter conclusively.

According to the Indian claim, Kalapani lies in Pithoragarh district of Uttar Pradesh. And since 1979, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police has been manning a post for surveillance over the area which is at the tri-junction of the international boundaries of India, Nepal and China's Tibet Autonomous Region.

Nepal, however, claims that the Kalapani area lies well within its Darchula district in its far-western region and, therefore, the ITBP presence there amounts to ''Indian encroachment of Nepali territory.'' It has, therefore, demanded that the Indian paramilitary force's border post be removed and the area be restored to it.

Meanwhile, both New Delhi and Kathmandu have further maintained that they are committed to abiding by the decision of the joint working group.

But even though the joint working group continues its deliberations, certain sections in Kathmandu planned to launch a march to Kalapani to force the ITBP to vacate the area and restore to Nepal its own territory.

Keen to whip up anti-Indian sentiments -- an often successfully tried and tested political ploy in Nepal -- the Communist Party of Nepal-Marxist Leninist stole a lead in the matter by launching its march to Kalapani last week.

And prior to setting out, its student wing, the All Nepal National Free Students Union, submitted a memorandum to Indian Ambassador K V Rajan who, during the meeting, endeavoured to explain to them the Indian position in the matter.

As a result, the mere reiteration of the Indian stand at the joint working group meetings was widely attacked in the Nepali media the next day as India having implied that ''the Nepali territory of Kalapani'' belonged to it and had been so since the 19th century with successive British, Indian and Nepali governments acknowledging it.

Even Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala took up cudgels, declaring that Kalapani belonged to Nepal and that the controversy be resolved ''once and for all". Koirala also informed mediapersons that he had pulled up Rajan for making such statements. ''When border talks were already on, these will only nullify the whole process,'' he said.

However, Rajan has maintained that he made the statements after he felt that a students march was unlikely to be useful or helpful in contributing to a mutually satisfactory resolution of the issue and that the question of relocating the ITBP post at Kalapani is best left to be determined by the results of the ongoing discussions between the two governments on demarcation of the boundary.

Rajan further clarified that his reference to the historical background of the boundary in the Kalapani area was made in the context of the unfair insinuation that India is knowingly in occupation of Nepali territory.

He further maintained that given an atmosphere of goodwill, all pending issues relating to the border, including Kalapani, can be amicably resolved to the satisfaction of both the countries, on the basis of objective examination of all relevant historical facts and total transparency.

UNI

Tell us what you think of this report