By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS
Kathmandu : Nepal has expressed serious concern at its southern neighbour India’s plan to build a highway in the Terai plains near its border, fearing it could inundate Nepal’s frontier towns and villages during monsoon and impact the environment adversely.
Foreign Minister Sahana Pradhan summoned the Indian ambassador to Nepal Shiv Shankar Mukherjee Tuesday to inquire about the east-west highway that India is planning to build near its border with Nepal.
According to media reports, the 1,800 km highway will be built at a height of eight feet to improve road connectivity in the plains during monsoon.
As reports about the project started appearing in Nepal’s media, there was a growing fear that the Indian highway could cause the border villages in Nepal, which are at a lower elevation, to be submerged during monsoon.
On Sunday, Nepal MPs took up the issue and the parliamentary committee for natural resources asked the foreign ministry to ask India for details of the project.
A six-member team of the MPs was also formed to investigate the project.
There are allegations that India has been building the border highway with sand and soil from Nepal without paying for them.
Pradhan said while Nepal did not object to India building the highway, it needed to know the details as well as to ensure that the construction would not cause any problem for Nepalese living across the border.
Kantipur Television, Nepal’s biggest private television station, also reported that Pradhan had raised the issue of the Laxmanpur barrage in the India-Nepal border area, saying that India had not replied to the Nepal government’s concern about four years ago about the inundation caused by the construction.
Pradhan also told the Indian envoy that Nepal was concerned about a recent incident in which India’s border security forces had reportedly killed a Nepali who was returning home after shopping in India.
The TV channel said the envoy had told the minister that the Indian highway was still at the planning stage.
Interestingly, while Nepal has objected to the proposed highway in India, it has not said anything about China, its northern neighbour, building a highway right up to the Everest base camp, an ecologically fragile region.
With Beijing to host the Olympics in 2008, China has announced its plan to take the Olympic torch rally to the summit of the highest peak in the world.
To enable a direct telecast of the march, it has ambitious plans to install communication equipment up among the mountains.
Though the Everest is Nepal’s pride, the government of Girija Prasad Koirala has remained silent about the Chinese projects, all of which have been carried out without consulting or informing Nepal.