• Friday, March 29, 2024

HEADLINE STORY

Modi meets Nepal PM Prachanda, vows to make ‘superhit’ partnership with Himalayan neighbour

Prachanda, a leader of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-Maoist), has visited India in his first bilateral trip abroad after assuming the prime minister’s office last December.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi with his Nepali counterpart Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ at Hyderabad House in New Delhi on Thursday, June 1, 2023. (ANI Photo/Jitender Gupta)

By: Shubham Ghosh

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi on Thursday (1) met his Nepali counterpart Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ and held wide-ranging talks focusing on boosting the two neighbouring countries’ cooperation in several areas, including energy, connectivity and trade.

After their meeting, Modi said both nations will continue to take India-Nepal ties to Himalayan heights.

The Indian prime minister also said that he took many important decisions along with Prachanda to make the two nations’ partnership super hit in future.

Prachanda, a leader of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-Maoist), has visited India in his first bilateral trip abroad after assuming the prime minister’s office for the third time in December last year. It may be mentioned here that Modi, after getting elected as the prime minister for the first time in 2014, had made his second bilateral visit to Nepal.

Sources familiar with the Nepali prime minister’s visit to India said earlier that transforming the civilisational ties between the two South Asian neighbours with deeper cooperation in areas such as connectivity, economy, energy and infrastructure would be the focus area of talks between the two leaders.

Nepal, a country landlocked between India and China, is important for New Delhi for its overall strategic interests in the region, and the leaders of both nations have often noted the age-old “Roti-Beti” relationship, referring to cross-border marriages between the people of both nations.

Kathmandu, on the other hand, relies heavily on India for transportation of goods and services. Its access to the sea is through its major southern neighbour, and a predominant proportion of its requirements is imported from and through India.

Nepal shares a border of over 1,850 kilometres with five Indian states – Sikkim, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

The India-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1950 forms the bedrock of the two nations’ special relations. They have mostly shared a good relation barring a few phases when the ties were affected by geopolitical and political reasons.

Nepali foreign minister NP Saud, who is part of Prachanda’s delegation in India, said on Wednesday that issues including trade, transit, connectivity and the border issues would figure in the bilateral talks.

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