Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal speaks before taking the vote of confidence in Nepal’s Parliament in Kathmandu, Nepal. AP.
Kathmandu: Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who won the trust vote in the ‘Pratinidhi Sabha’, or the house of representatives, has said that his country will seek a balanced relation with India and China.
Also known as Prachanda, the PM is seen as pro-China. The coalition led by him in the country vowed to retrieve its territories allegedly occupied by India, but chose to remain silent on Nepal’s border dispute with China.
After winning the trust vote of 268 of the 275 lawmakers in the country’s parliament, Prachanda said that his government’s foreign policy would be guided by the national interest of Nepal.
“Nepal would seek balanced and friendly relations with all countries, including its two neighbours – China and India,” Prachanda said.
In Nepal, the ruling coalition is led by Prachanda’s Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) and K P Sharma Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist).
The coalition government, however, has pledged in its Common Minimum Programme (CMP) that it would get back the territories that Nepal claimed as part of its own, but accused India of illegally occupying.
Interestingly, the CMP, which was formally made public mere hours before the trust vote, had no mention to Nepal’s territorial dispute with China.
India-Nepal relations
The last few years have witnessed some turbulences in India-Nepal relations. In 2015, with the flaring up of Madhesi issue, some politicians from Nepal blamed India responsible for it, although inconclusively.
Over the recent years, India has been used as a punching bag for domestic politics by some Nepali leaders. With KP Sharma Oli assuming charge of the Prime Minister of Nepal in 2018, some issues between India and Nepal relations started to come up.
The Oli government showed a visible inclination towards China and didn’t shy away from raking up issues ranging from territorial disputes in Limpiyadhura, Kalapani and Lipulekh that too at a time when the Indian Army had been resisting the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s aggressive moves in eastern Ladakh.
Not just this, Oli had also got a new map that showed nearly 400 sq kms of India’s areas as part of Nepal, endorsed by parliament of his country, apparently at the behest of China.
The ties between New Delhi and Kathmandu got back on track after Sher Bahadur Deuba of the Nepali Congress took over as Prime Minister of Nepal in July 2021.
Nepal PM Prachanda’s pro-China ideologies
Prachanda, who led an ultra-leftist insurgency in Nepal between 1996 and 2006, took oath as the new Prime Minister of India on 26 December, 2022. Coincidently, the day also marked the 130th birth anniversary of Mao Zedong, whose ideology inspired Prachanda to lead insurgency in the country.
Maoist leader, Prachanda, became the prime minister with support of Oli. He ditched his alliance partner the NC to install a communist-led government in Kathmandu with rival KP Sharma Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist).
In the past, Prachanda had said that a new understanding with India needed to be developed on the basis of a “changed scenario” in Nepal.
Immediately after swearing in as PM of Nepal, he had said that he would maintain friendly ties with both India and China.
As per reports, Prachanda is also reported to have a close and direct relationship with the Communist Party of China.
Within a week of becoming Nepal’s PM, Prachanda inaugurated a regional international airport built with the Chinese assistance in western Nepal’s tourist hub of Pokhara.
With Prachanda-Oli coalition in power in Nepal, China has intensified its bid to expand its footprints and geopolitical influence in the country. This includes revival of a project to lay a cross-border railway track.
Not just this, Beijing has lifted three-year suspension and has now recently restarted allowing goods from Nepal to be exported to China through the Rasuwagadhi-Kerung border.
With inputs from agencies
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