Accepting the invitation of the government of India, Rabi Lamichhane is embarking on a three-day official visit to New Delhi on June 1 at a time when friction is slowly building between Kathmandu and New Delhi. However, neither side has announced the visit.
The India visit of Lamichhane comes ahead of any official visit from the government side to New Delhi, or vice-versa.
Lamichhane, who is the chief of the party that leads the most powerful government in recent history of Nepal, is going on an official visit to New Delhi at the invitation of the Ministry of External Affairs, India.
During the visit, according to two sources in Kathmandu and New Delhi, Lamichhane is scheduled to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, and BJP President Nitin Nabin, among others.
However, some observers in New Delhi said that BJP stalwarts and senior government and security officials in New Delhi are aware of the differences in the working styles of Prime Minister Balendra Shah and Lamichhane, and that the visit of one is not a substitute for the Nepali prime minister’s visit.
Neither side has officially announced the visit, and there is no official communication from the RSP to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to manage the visit, a foreign ministry official told the Post.
Sources in New Delhi say a meeting between Lamichhane and Modi has been proposed for June 2, adding that this gives an opportunity for both sides to engage and understand each other in the changed political context in Kathmandu.
“The RSP is a relatively new party but emerged with a super-majority in recent elections. This has made New Delhi reach out to the RSP leadership and the government,” a source in New Delhi told the Post.
“The visit was planned in order to maintain high-level contacts with new Nepali leadership. It has nothing to do with recent irritants in bilateral ties,” the source added.
The India visit of Lamichanne comes after the postponement of the visit of Indian Foreign Secretary Misri to Kathmandu and in the wake of boundary dispute in Lipulekh. India had also indirectly expressed concerns over imposition of customs duties on goods valued over Rs100 brought into Nepal from India and postponement of Misri’s visit.
Misri was supposed to visit Kathmandu on May 11 to listen to the priorities of the new government as agreed between the foreign ministers of Nepal and India.
On April 10, during his Mauritius visit, Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal held talks with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar and agreed to send Misri to Kathmandu in order to hold talks with senior Nepali leaders including the prime minister, foreign, finance and other ministers.
But just ahead of Misri’s scheduled visit, Nepal and India entered into a dispute over Lipulekh. Prime Minister Shah also continued to maintain his old stand that he would not meet officials below his protocol rank. Both these factors led to the cancellation of Misri’s visit.
In the midst of these back-to-back developments, New Delhi invited Lamichanne for an India visit.
Government spokesperson and Education Minister Sasmit Pokharel said that there was no need to link Lamichhane’s visit with the prime minister’s.
During the Mauritius meeting, Foreign Minister Khanal had disclosed that Prime Minister Shah had accepted an invitation extended by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit India. Speculations were thus rife that Prime Minister Shah would begin his foreign trips with a visit to India.
Responding to a journalist’s question about whether Lamichhane’s visit was being viewed as an “alternative” as the prime minister had not traveled to India, spokesperson Pokharel said: “The prime minister will visit India when the right time comes. At present, he has not traveled anywhere, not only India. Right now, our focus is heavily on work at home.”
An aide to the prime minister told the Post that there is no truth behind the speculation that the prime minister and party president have different positions on Lamichhane’s India visit. “The party president is very much in touch with the prime minister and two are consulting each other,” the aide said.
However the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not communicated to Nepali Embassy in New Delhi on Lamichhane’s upcoming visit.
A pair of RSP lawmakers, Bipin Acharya and Deepk Bohora, as well as Lamichhane’s wife Nikita Poudel, will accompany him to New Delhi, according to the aide.
RSP General Secretary Kabindra Burlakoti said consultations were underway with Indian officials regarding the visit. “The matter is also being discussed within the party,” he said on Monday evening.
A source in New Delhi told the Post that this is the continuation of the high-level visits that used to take place from Kathmandu to New Delhi at top political level in the past.
“Earlier the Co-chair of the dissolved Communist Party of Nepal, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba, and others had visited New Delhi and held talks with different leaders. So the visit of Lamichhane should be seen from the same perspective,” the source close to BJP said.
Back in Kathmandu, Minister Pokharel said that Lamichhane was travelling in his personal capacity and that it would be wrong to connect it with an official government visit. “It has nothing to do with the prime minister. People may try to connect it with the prime minister’s visit, but there is no relation between the two [visits],” he said.
Nihar Nayak, an associate professor at University of Delhi, said the RSP president’s visit will bolster Nepal-India relations at both government and party levels.
“It offers the BJP a chance to understand the RSP’s perspectives on foreign, economic, and strategic matters. Up until now, the BJP has mainly engaged with Nepal’s established parties. The visit will also enable Rabi to challenge the media’s narrative that bilateral relations are strained, especially after Nepal’s diplomatic note on Lipulekh and the imposition of tax on Indian goods over Rs 100. Since PM Balen is preoccupied with domestic issues and has no plans for an overseas trip, a party-to-party visit at this juncture could be quite significant,” he said.