The row over Lipu-Lekh, located on the Nepal-China border, erupted after a joint statement issued on May 15 in Beijing during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit read that the two of Nepal’s neighbours agreed to expand border trade through the pass.

The 28th point of the joint communiqué states that “the two sides agreed to hold negotiation on augmenting the list of traded commodities, and expand the border trade at the Lipu-Lekh pass.”

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it is in consultation with the concerned line agencies to collect facts to claim that the Lipu-Lekh pass belongs to Nepal.

The matter has already been raised by the International and Labour Committee of Parliament which urged the Foreign Ministry to take up the matter with India and China. Though the ministry has been refusing to divulge information on the matter, it is making “diplomatic moves quietly”.

“We are collecting evidence and information so that we can firmly put our position with both the neighbours,” said Foreign Minister Mahendra Bahadur Pandey.

Not much discussion took place on the matter in meetings with Indian and Chinese foreign ministers who were here for the June 25 donor conference.  

It was agreed that PM Sushil Koirala would take up the matter with India and Foreign Minister Pandey would discuss the matter with China during bilateral talks on the sidelines of the International Conference on Nepal’s Reconstruction.

“Since we are not prepared, it would be premature to take up the issue without solid evidence and proof. We need to do adequate homework before taking up the matter with India and China,” said a senior Foreign Ministry official.

He added that the ministry is in consultation with security agencies responsible for border security, the Home Ministry and the Department of Survey.

PM Koirala has already raised the issue with his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, during his telephonic conversation on June 11 while extending an invitation to him to attend the reconstruction conference that concluded on Thursday. An informed official said Modi had replied that it was a new issue for him and he did not know that the matter would be seriously objected to in Nepal.

“The issue will be taken up by the foreign secretary-level mechanism as authorised by the two sides during Modi’s visit to Nepal last year,” said Dinesh Bhattarai, foreign relations adviser to the PM. During the Indian PM’s visit, the two countries had agreed to assign the task to settle the boundary disputes including the border areas of Susta and Kalapani at the mechanism. “This is no doubt a disputed issue but there will be no compromise on our sovereignty,” said Bhattarai. In his opinion published in the Post earlier this week, survey expert Buddhi Narayan Shrestha wrote that the Lipu-Lekh pass is part of the Nepali territory. “The historic maps of 1827 and 1856, among others published by the British Survey of India, depict that the Western boundary of Nepal is extended up to Limpiyadhura, and the river originating from this point is named as ‘River Kalee’. Similarly, the ‘Old Atlas of China,’ a map published during the Qing Dynasty (1903), depicts, in Chinese characters, Limpiyadhura as the source of the Kali River.”