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New Delhi — Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Nepalese counterpart Sher Bahadur Deuba met in New Delhi today with the two countries launching multiple initiatives as well as signing four crucial agreements in multiple domains.
The two countries signed agreements on Nepal becoming the 105th member of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), technical cooperation in railways, supply of petroleum products and sharing of technical expertise in the petroleum sector between Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. (IOCL) and Nepal Oil Corporation Ltd. (NOC).
The two Prime Ministers also witnessed the launch of the first passenger train service between India’s Jayanagar and Nepal’s Kurtha, the hand-over of the Solu corridor transmission project by India to Nepal and the progress of the construction of 132 health facilities across 10 districts in Nepal under a Government of India (GoI) grant.
The two countries announced the launch of the Indian RuPay card in Nepal, with the domestic variant of the RuPay card (roughly 83 per cent of all RuPay cards issued) to be functional on about 1400 Point of Sale (POS) machines in Nepal.
The move makes Nepal the fourth country outside India where RuPay is functional after Bhutan, Singapore and UAE.
The inaugurated Jaynagar-Kurtha railway section is part of the Jaynagar-Bijalpura-Bardibas rail link being constructed with grant assistance of INR 548 crore from the Government of India. It is a 35 km rail section, 3 km of which lies in the Indian state of Bihar and the rest in Nepal.
The project is the first broad-gauge passenger rail link between the two countries, opening an entirely new dimension for cross-border connectivity. Till 2014, this was an existing rail service on a metre-gauge rail link between Jaynagar and Janakpur.

The Solu Corridor 132 kV power transmission line and substation project is one of the major projects in Nepal undertaken under the Government of India’s Line of Credit (LoC). The 90 km 132 kV Double Circuit line connects the remote Solukhumbu, Khotang and Okhaldhunga districts of North Eastern Nepal with Nepal’s national electricity grid.
After its operationalization, the transmission line will bring electricity from existing and upcoming hydro projects in the area into the national grid, and also supply power into the rural electrification networks of nearby districts. The project is expected to be crucial for the socio-economic development in the rural part of Nepal, in addition to contributing to Nepal’s overall economic and industrial development.
Nepalese Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba also held wide-ranging deliberations with PM Modi on various topics including cooperation in the power sector, railway projects, flood control programs, as well as the border dispute between the two countries.
Yesterday, the Nepalese Prime Minister met External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla in the national capital.
On Friday, he met Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) President JP Nadda at the party headquarters in a courtesy meeting.
The last Head of State/Head of Government-level visit from Nepal was in May 2019, when then PM K P Oli visited India for the swearing-in ceremony of PM Narendra Modi and the Union Council of Ministers. Before that PM Modi had visited Nepal in August 2018 for the 4th BIMSTEC Summit in Kathmandu, which was preceded by a State Visit to Nepal in May 2018.
PM Modi had extended a congratulatory message to Sher Bahadur Deuba soon after he won the Vote of Confidence in Nepal’s Parliament. This was followed by a congratulatory telephonic conversation on 19 July 2021. The most recent meeting between PM Modi and Sher Bahadur Deuba took place on November 2, 2021, on the sidelines of COP 26 in Glasgow.
Sher Bahadur Deuba is a veteran politician of the Nepali Congress with a political career spanning over seven decades. This is Deuba’s fifth tenure as PM. His first term was from September 1995 to March 1997.
He has visited India several times, both when in and out of power. This will be his fifth visit to India as PM, with the last visit being in August 2018. The previous three visits took place in 2004, 2002 and 1996. (ANI)

New Delhi — Much like the rest of South Asia, the landlocked Himalayan nation Nepal is confronted with a lack of infrastructure. Challenges on regional connectivity, restrictive trade policies and inefficient procedures have been some of the obstacles hindering trade in the region.

In order to overcome these challenges, India and Nepal have inked treaties and trade agreements that address concerns for infrastructural development and envisage the establishment of a regional cooperation mechanism.

As many as 98 per cent of Nepal’s transit trade takes place through India and 65 per cent of Nepal’s total trade is with India. India continues to lend sustained support to Nepal in building infrastructure, particularly to facilitate air traffic routes for cargo, as also faster and cheaper waterways and railways for transporting goods across borders.

With Indian assistance, many infrastructural projects are either being undertaken, are nearing completion or have been concluded in Nepal, with the primary objective of bolstering trade by way of improved connectivity. India has operationalized many such projects in Nepal which include big and small highways, bridges, for road construction in the Terai region.

Approximately INR 5,253 crore worth of road projects are being (or have been) implemented, which would benefit India and Nepal. A category of projects that deserves special mention is road connectivity between the two countries.

The projects include a 144 km road from Rupaidiha to Barabanki (INR 1,338 crore), a 184 km road from Sonauli to Gorakhpur (approximately INR 570 crore), the Fobesganj-Jogbani road as well as a road linking Piprakodi to Raxaul (INR 429 crore) and 10 other roads costing around INR 500 crore.

India has helped lay a cross-border petroleum pipeline to ensure a smooth supply of petroleum products to Nepal. Motihari Amalekhgunj petroleum pipeline is the first of its kind in South Asia. The 69-km pipeline will reduce the cost of transportation of fuel from India to Nepal and prove to be a game-changing project in Nepal.

To build a robust rail network between the two countries, work is ongoing on at least six railway projects. These projects are: Jaynagar (India)-Janakpur (Nepal) to Bardibas in Nepal, Jogbani in India to Biratnagar in Nepal, Nautanwa in India to Bhairahawa in Nepal, Rupaidiha in India to Nepalgunj in Nepal, and New Jalpaiguri in India to Kakarbhitta in Nepal, and Kathmandu-Raxual.
India has developed a waterway on the Ganges River which connects Varanasi and the seaport of Haldia, Kolkata. To provide linkages through waterways, it is working on inland waterways network to allow Nepal to use three inland waterways, thus expanding its transit options.

Nepal can operate its own vessels on the river Ganga. India has given consent to access the Kolkata-Kalughat, Raxaul; Kolkata-Sahebgunj, Biratnagar and Kolkata-Varanasi-Raxaul routes for waterways. Additionally, India has built integrated check posts (ICP) in Biratnagar.

The ICP boasts of some of the most modern facilities such as electronic weighbridges, fire safety, warehousing facilities including refrigerated cargo, 24×7 monitoring through CCTV and public announcement systems.
The post also has the capability of handling around 500 trucks per day.

Also, India handed over the Integrated Check Post (ICP) Birgunj to Nepal. India is also constructing two more such ICPs at Saunali (India)- Bhairahawa(Nepal) and Nepalgunj Road(India)-Nepalgunj(Nepal).

Besides, India inaugurated two projects in Nepal which were built with India’s grant assistance of Nepali Rupees 89.2 million. Of these, the Rapti Cold Storage Building in Lamahi Bazar of Lamahi was inaugurated in April 2021.

The connectivity has assumed greater significance with the formation of regional and sub-regional groupings like BBIN and BIMSTEC. The physical infrastructure being built with Indian assistance will help Nepal boost her trade in the region. (ANI)

Kathmandu — Nepalese Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba will visit Varanasi during his official visit to India from April 1 to 3.

As per the itinerary, he will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 2.

This will be his first visit to India after becoming Prime Minister of the Himalayan nation in July 2021. He has visited India in each of his four earlier stints as PM. His last visit to India was in 2017.

This visit is a part of the tradition of periodic high-level exchanges between the two countries. It would give an opportunity to both sides to review the entire gamut of bilateral relations including development and economic partnership, trade, cooperation in the health sector, power, connectivity, people to people links and other issues of mutual interest.

This comes after Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councilor Wang Yi’s conclusion of his three-day visit to Nepal.
Wang’s Nepal visit comes in the backdrop of Nepal ratifying the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact, a grant of USD 500 million developmental assistance from the US to Kathmandu, seen as a setback for China.

The Chinese official, associated with China’s diplomatic corps in Kathmandu, said that in the lead up to the compact’s endorsement, there was a lack of coordination among the Chinese agencies handling Nepal. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, he also said the communication gap between Beijing and the Chinese Embassy was also growing, according to the Annapurna Express article.
Nepal’s federal parliament did ratify the compact, as the Americans wished, but in the run-up to ratification, Beijing tried hard to stop it.

It sees the USD 500 million development grant to Nepal as a part of America’s strategy to encircle China, the article noted. (ANI)