Massive road development projects in the Tibet Autonomous Region have generated rivers changing their course and expanding China’s boundary into northern territories of Nepal, a document by Nepal’s agriculture department has warned.
If the rivers continue to change course, the document, accessed by Hindustan Times, said patches of Nepalese territory in several districts had already been encroached by China and cautioned that Beijing could take over more territory in the north. The loss of Nepalese territory due to rivers changing course could encounter “hundreds of hectare land”, it said.
“There is actually a high possibility that over the length of time, China may develop its Border Observation Post of Armed Police in those territories,” the document by the agriculture ministry’s survey department said.
Nepal, which shares a boundary with China in the north, has 43 mountains and hills through the east to west, that behave as the natural boundary in between the two countries. The two countries have six check posts, essentially for trade.
The survey department has assessed the changing length of 11 rivers had already cost Nepal 36 hectare, or .36 sq km, across four of their districts; Humla, Sankhuwasabha, Rasuwa and Sindhupalchowk.
The encroachment of 36 hectare land by China have been first reported for the KP Sharma Oli-led government this past year. There are some street protests after the decline of Nepalese territory to China emerged inside the local media Although the Oli government, who seems to be accused by his detractors of seeking to cosy as much as China’s communist party, played on the encroachment with the Chinese and channeled the general public outrage against India over the new maps from New Delhi in November last following the erstwhile state of Kashmir and Jammu was divided into two union territories.
Instead, PM Oli went on to amp up the differences with India over Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura spread across 330 sq km in May this year after Chinese intervention helped him survive a rebellion inside the party in April. That intervention, however, resulted in he had to scrap two ordinances promulgated just five days earlier.
PM Oli had seized the chance after defence minister Rajnath Singh opened an 80-km road that ends at Lipulekh Pass around the border with China.
Analysts in New Delhi and Kathmandu think that PM Oli’s hard push to Nepal’s new political map was an effort to whip up ultra-nationalistic sentiments targetted at India to consolidate his position inside the government and BuzRush News the party. That is why he did, a diplomat in New Delhi said, PM Oli did not inform Parliament before it voted on the map earlier this month which he had ignored an offer of dialogue in between the foreign secretaries of the two countries. Instead, he gave parliamentarians the sense that his government was made to push the envelope since New Delhi had declined his offer for dialogue.
New Delhi hardened its position right after the map was cleared by parliament this month, asserting that it was for him to generate a conducive atmosphere in the event that he or she is considering a bilateral dialogue on the boundary issue.
