Tripura CM's remark a new irritant in India-Nepal ties

BJP had plans to expand its footprints beyond the geographical boundaries of India and to form governments in Nepal and Sri Lanka, Biplab Deb quoted Amit Shah

Comment by Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Deb, has emerged as a new irritant in India’s relations with Nepal.

Kathmandu has lodged a protest with New Delhi over Biplab Deb’s recent statement quoting Union Home Minister Amit Shah saying that the BJP had plans to expand its footprints beyond the geographical boundaries of India and to form governments in Nepal and Sri Lanka.

“Noted. Formal objection has been already conveyed,” Nepalese Foreign Minister, Pradip Gyawali, posted on Twitter on Tuesday, when another user drew his attention to the comment made by Chief Minister of the northeastern state of India.

Deb has made several controversial remarks ever since he led the BJP to a landslide victory in Tripura, which was a bastion of the Left Front for 25 years, in March 2018 and took over as Chief Minister of the state.

His bizarre remarks ranged from claiming the existence of internet during the era of Mahabharata to questioning the rationale of awarding the Miss World title to Diana Hayden.

This is however the first time his comment evoked protest from a foreign government.

Deb made the comment during an event organised by the state unit of the BJP in Agartala last Saturday to thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Government at the Centre for the Union Budget 2021-2022.

He quoted Shah telling the local BJP leaders during an earlier visit to the northeastern state that while the saffron party had come to power in most of the states in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka had still been left to be ruled by it.

Shah had still been the BJP president when he, according to Tripura Chief Minister, made the comment.

The comment irked the Nepalese Government, which took it up with Embassy of India in Kathmandu. The Embassy of Nepal in New Delhi also lodged a formal protest with the Ministry of External Affairs, sources said on Tuesday.

Deb’s comment has emerged as a new irritant in India-Nepal relations, which remained stressed since Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli’s government in Kathmandu ratcheted up the territorial dispute between the two nations last year, ostensibly at the behest of China. Kathmandu in May 2020 lodged a protest over a new 80-kilometre-long road New Delhi built from Dharchula in Uttarakhand to the Lipulekh Pass – an India-Nepal-China tri-junction boundary point. It alleged that the road passed through Nepal – a claim dismissed by India. The Oli Government, however, went ahead, published a new map, which showed nearly 400 sq kms of India’s areas in Kalapani, Lipulekh Pass and Limpiyadhura as part of Nepal. It also got the Nepalese Parliament to amend by the country’s Constitution to endorse the new map.

Colombo has not yet made public whether or not it has lodged a protest with New Delhi over the remarks made by the Chief Minister of Tripura.

India’s relations with Sri Lanka are also going through a difficult phase with the government led by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa recently scrapping a tripartite deal it had inked with New Delhi and Colombo in 2019 to let India and Japan develop and run the East Container Terminal of the Colombo Port.