By IANS,
Kathmandu : Less than a month after India sent its Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon to Nepal, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs and Water Resources Pawan Kumar Bansal is arriving in Kathmandu on a two-day visit Saturday.
Bansal is the first Indian minister to visit Nepal since the fall of the Maoist government in May and the formation of a new coalition led by communist leader Madhav Kumar Nepal.
Bansal will be inspecting the barrage on the Kosi river in southern Nepal, the bane of Nepal’s Terai region and adjoining Bihar state of India during monsoon, the Nepal Prime Minister’s Office in Kathmandu said.
Last year, the flooded Kosi killed over 1000 people, mostly in Bihar, and rendered over three million homeless.
The flood created bad blood between the two neighbours. Nepal accused Bihar of neglecting its responsibility to maintain the Kosi barrage, while India said Nepal had failed to ensure security of its inspection team who was hindered from carrying out repairs in time.
With the onset of monsoon this year, one of the 56 sluice gates of the Kosi has been damaged. On Thursday, a team from Jessop and Company, the Kolkata-based Indian wagon-manufacturing firm, arrived at barrage site in Sunsari district in southern Nepal to inspect the damage.
The Indian authorities said that only Jessop, which built the nearly five-decade-old barrage, can undertake the repair of the damaged sluice gate. The work, according to initial estimates, can cost about Rs.150 million.
Bansal will also pay a courtesy call on the prime minister in Kathmandu and meet Minister for Irrigation Bal Krishna Khand.
The visit coincides with the Asian Development Bank announcing an assistance package worth NRS 150 million for the rehabilitation of nearly 50,000 people from three areas in southern Nepal who lost their homes in last year’s flood.