The government is mulling sending an advance team to New Delhi to lay the ground for Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s upcoming visit to India, according to a top-ranking official at the Prime Minister’s Office.

The team will jointly work with the Indian officials to set bilateral talks agenda even though the dates of Dahal’s trip are yet to be finalised.

In the absence of a designated foreign minister, Prime Minister Dahal has instructed Chief Secretary Shanker Das Bairagi to coordinate with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to dispatch an advance team.

Due to the delays in Cabinet expansion, the prime minister himself is in charge of the foreign ministry, besides 15 other ministries.

Dahal could visit India between the second and third weeks of April, with exact travel dates subject to an official announcement.

Prime Minister Dahal’s chief personal secretary Ramesh Malla told the Post that Dahal has already instructed the chief secretary to form an advance team of representatives from various ministries who will discuss the visit agenda to make it fruitful. This will be the prime minister’s return visit, following Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hop over to Lumbini in May last year.

During his recent briefings to government Secretaries, Dahal had forwarded the proposal initially presented by Nepal’s ambassador to India, Shanker Sharma. The ambassador had come to Kathmandu recently and updated the prime minister and senior government officials on the visit plan. A secretary who was briefed on the matter said the team would do homework and lay the groundwork to make Dahal’s India visit a success.

Sources told the Post that a joint-secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, probably heading the South Asia division, could lead the team involving joint-secretaries from various other ministers. The team will have representatives from ministries including energy and water resources; physical infrastructure and transport; industry, commerce and supplies; and culture, tourism and civil aviation.

“We are thinking of sending an advance team to New Delhi,” a secretary at the prime minister's office said. “The team will discuss our agenda and that of the Indians, so that we can make the visit fruitful.”

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will coordinate with the officials, mostly from the ministries that have important agendas to be taken up during the visit. Who will lead the team is still unsure, but officials at the prime minister's office and the foreign ministry will take the lead,” said Malla, the chief personal secretary.

Nepal had stopped sending advance teams ahead of visits by the head of state or government. “Mostly due to the language problem, we would send such a team to China, but not India. But this time, the prime minister seems interested in sending a team due to the absence of a foreign minister and his business with the day-to-day affairs,” the secretary privy to the developments told the Post.

The date of the prime minister’s India visit will be fixed only after he gives his Cabinet full shape. Prime Minister Dahal has said that his first foreign visit will be to India.

After the prime minister expressed his intent to visit India first, New Delhi had sent Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kawtra to Kathmandu last month.

After winning a vote of confidence on March 20, Dahal reiterated that he would focus on the planned India tour. “I will go to India before April 20,” Dahal said.

“Though we are yet to finalise the date of visit, it could happen in the first or second week of April,” he told reporters at Parliament.

From China, which he visited first for the Beijing Olympics during his first stint as prime minister, Dahal has already received an invitation to the “Boao Forum for Asia” annual conference.

A senior foreign ministry official said they have yet to give final touches to the agenda “because we have not briefed the prime minister on our preparations”.

Ahead of the visit, besides regular preparations from the foreign ministry, the prime minister also consults former prime ministers, his Cabinet colleagues and leaders of the ruling and opposition parties.

“We have several pending issues with India which need to be sorted out. Economic partnership, trade and commerce, new air routes, energy issues, and signing of new hydropower projects with Indian investments are on the agenda,” said the foreign ministry official.