Nepalese Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli removed the country’s Deputy Prime Minister Ishwar Pokhrel from the Defense Ministry in Wednesday’s cabinet shakeup, a move seen as an effort to reestablish ties with its giant neighbor India, they said. people familiar with the matter. As Defense Minister, Ishwar Pokhrel had been one of India’s sharpest critics in Prime Minister Oli’s cabinet.
The changing of the guard at the Ministry of Defense, Prime Minister Oli will be in charge of this portfolio, has been scheduled ahead of the visit to Nepal of the Indian army chief, General MM Naravane, on November 3.
Pokhrel has been attached to the Prime Minister’s Office, an assignment which according to Nepalese media means he will be a minister without a portfolio.
In May this year, when General Naravane hinted at China’s role in Nepal’s raucous reaction to an 80 km road to Lipulekh built for pilgrims to Kailash Mansarovar in Tibet, Ishwar Pokhrel had tried to provoke Gurkha soldiers. They have been an integral part of the Indian Army for decades.
General Naravane’s comment had “hurt the feelings of Nepalese Gurkha army personnel who gave their lives to protect India,” Pokhrel had said, stating that Gurkha soldiers in the Indian army would not respect their superiors after the general’s comment. Naravane. There were also other offensive comments from the minister.
Observers for Nepal say Pokhrel had also recently opposed General Naravane’s visit to the Himalayan country on November 3 and wanted India to come to the table first to discuss the border dispute between the two countries.
Pokhrel often also had problems with his own army chief, General Purna Chandra Thapa. Gen Thapa, for example, had refused to play his game in the Lipulekh row when he refused to issue a statement. A report in the Kathmandu Post said that General Thapa was also upset that the minister dragged the armed forces in line for the purchase of medical equipment to combat Covid-19.
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Pokhrel, who was considered one of Prime Minister Oli’s most trusted lieutenants, faced charges of corruption in acquiring medical equipment from China and was also accused of disrupting Nepal’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. Prime Minister Oli had appointed him to head the country’s top-level Covid-19 crisis management center.
During his visit to Nepal, the President of Nepal, Vidya Devi Bhandari, would confer on General Naravane the honorary rank of General of the Nepalese Army, in accordance with a long-standing convention between the armies of the two countries on a reciprocal basis. The Chief of the Nepalese Army, General Thapa, received the honorary rank of General of the Indian Army in January 2019.
Prime Minister Oli had laid the groundwork for its outreach in India in August when he called Prime Minister Narendra Modi to greet him on the occasion of India’s 74th Independence Day. Last month, he halted distribution of a new textbook that included the revised political map of the country that has angered India. The map shows three strategically important indigenous areas as part of their territory.
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