The temporary setbacks in relations between India and Nepal are now a thing of the past, bilateral relations between Delhi and Kathmandu have been improving steadily since Nepali Congress leader Sher Bahadur Deuba took over as the Prime Minister of Nepal in July 2021. Deuba will be arriving in Delhi on April 1, 2022, on a three-day visit, his first foreign visit since taking over as the Prime Minister of the Himalayan country. It is expected that the visit will inject a new momentum to the bilateral ties, especially in areas of trade, investment, healthcare and connectivity.
The Prime Minister of Nepal is scheduled to have wide-ranging talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 2. Deuba will also visit Varanasi, Modi’s parliamentary constituency. In fact, Deuba has agreed to visit India shortly after an invitation extended by Narendra Modi. A number of agreements are likely to be signed between Nepal and India during Deuba’s visit, including one on a cross-border railway which has been on the table for some time.
The Jaynagar – Kurtha cross border railway link, according to a Kathmandu Post report, will be the first modern railway service in Nepal. The 35-km long cross-border railway link will connect Jaynagar in Bihar with Kurtha in Nepal. Earlier, there was a narrow-gauge rail link from Janakpur in Nepal to Jaynagar that had served people from 1937 to January 2014. With this railway link between India and Nepal likely to be inaugurated by the two Prime Ministers, Modi and Deuba, Delhi is set to pip Beijing at the post in the race between the two countries to set up a cross-border railway link with Nepal.
Though the Standard Operating Procedure for the cross-border railway operation between India and Nepal was signed in October 2021, the service could not be introduced in the absence of a law in Nepal to govern railway operations. The Diesel Electric Multiple Unit trains are reported to be lying idle in Janakpur in Nepal. To circumvent the delay in passage of a law in the Parliament of Nepal, Kathmandu has now decided to reissue a railway ordinance for the operation of the shuttle train between Kurtha in Nepal and Jaynagar in India.
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