All Nepal Football Association’s Pankaj Bikram Nembang and General Secretary Kiran Rai had no trouble entering the International Terminal of the Tribhuvan International Airport on Monday night. They were travelling to Mexico, with a transit in Istanbul, Turkey, for the inaugural match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Without further issue, Nembang and Rai had the boarding pass in their hands. But they could not board the flight to Istanbul.

“When their passports were checked, it was found they were kept under watch by the Department of Immigration,” said Anuj Bhandari, information officer at the TIA Immigration Office. “As a result, they were denied entry.”

Talking to the Post over the phone after office hours, Bhandari said that he was unaware of which flight number Nembang and Rai were boarding. “But they were travelling to Istanbul,” he shared.

According to Flightware, a flight-tracking and data platform, the flight departing from Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) in Kathmandu to Istanbul on Monday evening was Turkish Airlines’ flight TK727, which departed at around 9:12pm Nepali time.

The Department of Immigration—under the request of the National Sports Council, recommendation of the then Ministry of Youth and Sports and direction of the Ministry of Home Affairs—had updated the passport details of 24 ANFA officials, including Nembang and Rai, under ‘watchlist’ in April, around a month after the All Nepal Football Association (ANFA) was suspended for three months by the National Sports Council (NSC) on March 25.

On May 15, NSC lifted the suspension after pressure from FIFA. But the council did not recommend that the concerned authorities remove the passports of ANFA officials from the watchlist.

Nembang and Rai, with letters from FIFA and AFC, had reached the council on Sunday, requesting that their passports be removed from the immigration alert list. HamroKhelkud, an online sports media, reported that NSC Member-Secretary Ram Charitra Mehta had asked the visitors to resign and have the travel ban lifted.

But despite their request being denied, Nembang and Rai took the risk and reached the airport on Monday evening, only to be turned back.

Under ‘watchlist’, not ‘blacklist’

After suspending ANFA, the NSC had asked the Home Ministry to restrict the ANFA officials from travelling abroad. A secretary-level decision of the Home Ministry on April 23 had directed the DoI, with 13 pages of documents attached, to implement the NSC’s request to restrict the listed officials from leaving the country.

“We studied the documents but did not find enough context to blacklist the passports of ANFA officials,” Teeka Ram Dhakal, director and spokesperson at the DoI, told the Post. “We then updated their passport numbers under ‘watchlist’.”

Dhakal stresses that there is a difference between ‘watchlist’ and ‘blacklist’.

Passports of fugitives and those under serious investigation, among some other serious cases, are blacklisted under the recommendation of the Home Ministry. If those with blacklisted passports arrive at the airport or any other exit points, we deny them entry and hand them over to the law enforcement agency.

“But ANFA officials’ passports are not blacklisted. They are under the watchlist, meaning the president and the general secretary were denied entry but not apprehended,” Dhakal added.

However, it does not mean Nembang and Rai can reach Mexico by the time of the start of the biggest sports event of 2026, and probably for the next four years.

Luxury to travel from India

It took a month for the NSC to recommend that the authorities restrict ANFA officials from leaving the country. In the meantime, the council was regularly being urged and requested by football stakeholders who are against Nembang and his group to do so.

The regular pressure was to prevent ANFA officials from travelling to Vancouver, Canada, for the 76th FIFA Congress on April 30. With the passports under watchlist already, Nembang could not go to Canada and had to attend the Congress virtually.

But one representative of ANFA, who was among the 24, had reached one of the major cities of Canada to participate in the Congress. He was Indraman Tuladhar, the chief executive officer (CEO) of ANFA. He had flown from India.

“It is because we share an open border with India that Tuladhar could go to the other side without having to show his passport,” said Dhakal. “And since we do not share the details of passports’ suspension with India, he could fly unhindered. And it is not illegal because he was not a convict or a fugitive with the passport blacklisted.”

And Nembang and Rai can do the same because it is “not illegal”.

If they choose to take the land route to India, they could still bypass domestic immigration and make it to Mexico in time for the first of the 104 fixtures, which announces the start of the biggest sporting event in the world—the 2026 FIFA World Cup—with a bang. The opener is between the co-host and South Africa, of Group A, at the Mexico City Stadium. The match kicks off at 12:45am Nepali time on June 12.

The Post tried reaching out to ANFA President Nembang. But his phone was unreachable—“the subscriber is busy”—despite over a dozen tries on Tuesday evening.

Photo: ANFA’s Facebook

(From left) ANFA CEO Indraman Tuladhar, General Secretary Kiran Rai and President Pankaj Bikram Nembang during the executive committee meeting in December last year.