DEC 27 - Buddhi Narayan Shrestha’s article entitled “Border demarcation long overdue” (The Kathmandu Post, Dec 23) deserves critical reading. Shrestha, a very experienced senior surveyor of whom the country should really be proud of, regrettably confuses “sanctity and maintenance” of the border between Nepal and India with “border demarcation.” For Nepal, the border delineation/demarcation, as Shrestha too has rightly pointed out a number of times before, between the two countries is based on the 1856 map prepared and published by the British India Surveyor General Office. It is not Nepal, which is disputing the delineated border with India. It is India, which is imposing border disputes over Nepal by, to quote Shrestha himself, encroaching Nepal’s boundary at 54 sections “covering an area of 720 sq km in total.”
It is India’s official extraterritorial intention that encourages it to keep on violating sanctity of Nepal’s international border. It is the same intention that provides incentive to the Indian officials for not properly maintaining and respecting the paraphernalia that demarcate the border. Further, it is the same intention that informs us the reason why Indian officials have so infinitely been delaying the works that are essential to maintain and upkeep the border markers. Deliberate abstention from such works only helps create confusion in the general people and misleads the international opinion about Nepal’s sanctity of its international border, and as a consequence, keep it unstable, unregulated and insecure in collusion with a section of power elite in Nepal for whom India’s official favour is more important than the country’s territorial integrity.
Dr Upendra Gautam
Handigaun, KathmanduPosted on: 2003-12-28 05:19

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