NEW DELHI: Army Chief General MM Naravane will be visiting Nepal In the first week of November, on the first high-level visit from Kathmandu, a new political map was published that claimed Kalapani, Limpiyadhura and Lipulekh of Uttarakhand as part of its territory.
General Naravane is scheduled to meet with Nepal’s top political and military leaders to discuss bilateral relations during the visit. According to a long-standing reciprocal tradition, President Vidya Devi Bhandari will also award General Naravane the honorary rank of “General of the Army of Nepal” in a special inauguration ceremony, the officials said.
The visit will be an opportunity to reaffirm the close and enduring military ties with the landlocked Himalayan country, where China has made several strategic advances in recent years.
A distinctive political-diplomatic chill has crept into bilateral relations after Nepal vigorously protested against India’s inauguration of a new 80km link highway from Dharchula to the high altitude. Lipulekh Pass, which is near the India-Nepal-China triple junction, in May. India, in turn, rejected the new official map of Nepal issued by the government led by KP Sharma Oli as “artificial and unacceptable”.
But the strong ties between the two armies continue, with regular exchanges, combat exercises and training programs. The fourteenth edition of the joint exercise “Surya Kiran”, for example, was carried out at the Nepalese Army Battle School at Salijhandi in the Rupendehi district of Nepal in December last year.
There are also more than 28,000 Nepalese nationals currently serving in the seven Gorkha rifles (1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 8th, 9th and 11th) of the Indian Army, which also include Gorkhas domiciled in India from Darjeeling, Dehradun and Dharamshala. Nepal also has more than 1.25 lakh Indian army veterans, who get their pensions across the border.
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