Nepal PM to visit India in April

: Nepal’s new Prime Minister KP Oli will make his first foreign visit to India in the first week of April, during which he is expected to hold talks aimed at deepening bilateral ties and smoothing over past irritants.

There had been considerable speculation on whether Oli, who was elected in February, would pick China or India for his maiden foreign visit. Oli is widely perceived as being closer to Beijing and had often been critical of New Delhi in the past.

Though an official announcement about the visit is yet to be made, Nepal’s foreign ministry has already started ground work for the trip. The Indian side has proposed April 6-8 as the dates for the visit, a senior official in Kathmandu said.

“I am going to India very soon to deepen and strengthen ties,” Oli said on Tuesday while unveiling a book on Nepal-China relations in Kathmandu. “The dissatisfaction that India used to express on our Constitution is over. This issue is irrelevant after we held the three-tier elections recently and India welcomed it.”

The visit will give a fresh opportunity to both sides to revisit bilateral ties against the backdrop of the rivalry between India and China, experts said.

Oli and India had acrimonious relations in the past, especially after he lashed out at New Delhi over what he described as interference in Kathmandu’s internal matters. He was very critical of the blockade in the Madhes region bordering India in 2015.

Ties between Oli and the Indian side further deteriorated when he signed a transit agreement with China during his first stint as premier, ending New Delhi’s virtual monopoly over Kathmandu’s third country trade.

KATHMANDU