Amid border row with India, Nepal to publish new maps

The Nepal government decided on Monday to publish new maps showing Lipulekh and Kalapani, the subject of disputes with India, as part of Nepalese territory amid an escalating border row between the two countries. The decision was made at a meeting of the council of ministers chaired by Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli.

Nepal’s foreign minister Pradeep Gyawali tweeted in Nepali that the council of ministers had decided to publish a new map of the country showing the seven provinces, 77 districts and 753 local administrative divisions, including “Limpiyadhura, Lipulekh and Kalapani”.

The official map will be published soon by the land management ministry, he said.

Culture and tourism minister Yogesh Bhattarai, in a tweet, thanked Oli and said the decision “will be written in golden letters in the pages of history”.

There was no immediate response from Indian officials. The MEA has already said Lipulekh, at the centre of a border row over construction of a road to the border with China, is “completely within territory of India”.

Defence minister Rajnath Singh recently opened the 80-km road that ends at Lipulekh Pass. It was built so pilgrims going to Kailash-mansarovar can avoid dangerous high-altitude routes.

Businessman Vijay Mallya’s return to India from the UK, inevitable now that he has exhausted his legal options against India’s extradition request, is set to provide impetus to a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) of a larger conspiracy involving public sector bankers who lent him money, two CBI officials said.

Bankers cleared loans worth Rs.6,027 crore to Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines (KFA), ignoring false representations and the fact that the airline was in the red, said the officials, who requested anonymity.

CBI registered a separate case against Mallya and unknown others in August 2016 to probe the alleged conspiracy in the loans extended to Kingfisher by a consortium of 17 banks led by State Bank of India between 2005 and 2010. A chargesheet is yet to be filed in the case as Mallya hasn’t yet been questioned yet.

On his return from the UK, the CBI may take Mallya into custody and interrogate him about the role played by senior bank executives who may have influenced the decision by banks to extend loans to Kingfisher Airlines, the two CBI officials cited above said. Several managing directors and executive directors of the public sector banks, who approved these loans could face the heat, one of the officials said.

Some of the MDS and senior officials from top banks – including SBI, Punjab National Bank (PNB) and Central Bank of India – were questioned by a CBI special investigation team (SIT) in mid-2018. Kingfisher Airlines’ total outstanding loans, including interest that piled up, amounted to a little over Rs 10,000 crore.

The first official cited above said Mallya had met one bank MD on a Sunday. As banks are closed on Sundays, this is being seen as a move to influence the decision of loan approval.

Talking about the role of bankers, judge Emma Arbuthnot of the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London, ordering Mallya’s extradition to India on December 11, 2018, said:“conspiracies are very rarely proved with direct evidence and there is none in this case but there is evidence that the GOI [government of India] relies on from which it says the court can draw inferences that the bankers were involved in a conspiracy with KFA”.

The Afghan government on Monday rejected a senior Taliban leader’s remarks that India has been playing a “negative role” in Afghanistan, saying India has been cooperating in development and is expected to contribute to the peace process.

Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanikzai, the Taliban’s chief negotiator and head of its political office in Qatar, had been quoted by media Sunday saying India has been playing a negative role in Afghanistan for past 40 years.

The Afghan foreign ministry said on Monday that Afghanistan’s ties with India are “within international frameworks and based on mutual respect”. India has very good relations with Afghanistan and is one of the biggest donor countries, the ministry said.

This comes days after US Special Rep for Afghanistan Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, discussed Afghan peace process with MEA S Jaishankar and NSA Ajit Doval on a trip to New Delhi.