Nepal's ruling coalition vows to retrieve land from India, mum on row with China, Prachanda seeks balance in ties with both

Prachanda said that his government’s foreign policy would be guided by Nepal’s national interest

Kathmandu will seek a balanced relations with both New Delhi and Beijing, Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal said on Tuesday, even as the ruling coalition led by him maintained silence on the country’s boundary dispute with China, but vowed to retrieve its territories allegedly occupied by India.

Dahal, a.k.a. Prachanda, who took over as the prime minister on December 26 last, won the trust vote in the ‘Pratinidhi Sabha’, with 268 of the 275 lawmakers in the lower house of Parliament of Nepal supporting the confidence motion moved by him and only two voting against it. Not only the ruling coalition, led by Prachanda’s Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) and K P Sharma Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist), but the Nepali Congress, the main opposition party, also voted in favour of the motion moved by the prime minister.

Prachanda later said that his government’s foreign policy would be guided by the national interest of Nepal. He said that Nepal would seek balanced and friendly relations with all countries, including its two neighbours – China and India.

Read | Dahal's opportunism spells trouble for Nepal

The ruling coalition, however, pledged in its Common Minimum Programme that it would retrieve the territories that Nepal claimed as part of its own, but accused India of illegally occupying. The Common Minimum Programme, which was formally made public just a day before the trust vote, had no reference to Nepal’s territorial dispute with China.

New Delhi’s relations with Kathmandu had suffered a setback after the Oli’s government had in 2020 ratcheted up Nepal-India dispute over Lipulekh-Kalapani-Limpiyadhura area in 2020 – at a time when the Indian Army had been resisting the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s aggressive moves in eastern Ladakh. Oli had also got a new map, showing nearly 400 sq kms of India’s areas as part of Nepal, endorsed by parliament of his country, apparently at the behest of China.

The relations between New Delhi and Kathmandu had returned on track after Oli had been dethroned and Sher Bahadur Deuba of the Nepali Congress had taken over as the prime minister in July 2021, with support from the CPN (MC), which had broken its alliance with the CPN (UML).

Prachanda, who had led an ultra-leftist insurgency in Nepal from 1996 to 2006, had once worn on sleeves his ideological allegiance to the Communist Party of China. He had chosen to visit China first after becoming the prime minister of Nepal in 2008, although all of his predecessors in the past half-a-century had come to India on first official visits as premiers. When he had taken over as the prime minister for the second term in 2016, Prachanda, however, made it a point to visit India first and sought to strike a balance between Nepal’s ties with China and India.

The 68-year-old recently hinted that he would visit New Delhi first to commence his foreign visits during his third prime ministerial term.

What however caused unease in New Delhi is the re-emergence of Oli as the king-maker holding the key to the survival of the government led by Prachanda.

The NC and the CPN (MC) had a pre-poll alliance for the parliamentary elections held in November 2022 and they won 89 and 32 seats in the Pratinidhi Sabha respectively.

Prachanda, however, broke his CPN (MC)’s alliance with the NC as Deuba was not ready to allow him to take over as the prime minister for the first half of the five-year-tenure of the government. He then took support of the Oli’s CPN (UML) to form the government and take the top office in Kathmandu.