New Delhi, Feb 10 (Representative) Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra is set to travel to Nepal on Monday on a three-day visit during which he would extend an invitation to Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal to visit India at a convenient date, a Nepalese daily said. Foreign Secretary Kwatra is visiting Kathmandu at the invitation of his Nepalese counterpart Bharat Raj Paudyal, Kathmandu Post reported. Neither Kathmandu nor New Delhi have made a formal announcement of the visit. Foreign Secretary Kwatra earlier served as Indian ambassador to Nepal from May 2020 to April last year before his appointment to his current post. “We have several mechanisms at different levels including at the foreign secretary level,” Foreign Minister Bimala Rai Paudyal told Kathmandu Post. “The Indian foreign secretary will meet his counterpart where the two sides will discuss various issues and review the status of bilateral initiatives.” Soon after landing in Kathmandu, Kwatra will hold a foreign secretary-level meeting with Paudyal, followed by a meeting with Foreign Minister Paudyal.
The two foreign secretaries will review progress made in Indian-funded projects in Nepal and discuss various bilateral issues, according to Nepali officials. The Nepalese Foreign Secretary had visited New Delhi in September last year. The two top diplomats will also review progress on various initiatives and announcements made during the high-level visits of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to each other’s countries last year. Deuba as prime minister had visited India last April while Modi came to Nepal in May. ‘On behalf of the Indian prime minister, Kwatra will also extend an invitation to Prime Minister Dahal to visit India at a convenient date,” the daily said quoting a Nepali diplomat. Prime Minister Dahal had told a group of journalists on January 15 that his first foreign visit would be to India. The date of Dahal’s Delhi visit will be decided after Kwatra’s visit, according to officials. In 2008, after being elected prime minister for the first time, Dahal broke with the tradition of Nepali prime ministers visiting New Delhi first, and instead off to Beijing to take part in the Summer Olympics inauguration ceremony that year.
But upon his return from Beijing, Dahal tried to control the perceived damage done in Nepal-India relations and said the Beijing visit was not official and that his first ‘official visit’ would still be to New Delhi.But during his second stint as prime minister, Dahal started his foreign visit from India in September 2016.In July last year, Dahal (who was not PM at the time) visited India at the invitation of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president JP Nadda. Dahal had at the time also met External Affairs Minister of India S Jaishankar, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval besides the BJP president. The Indian Foreign Secretary will also call on President Bidya Devi Bhandari, and former prime ministers Sher Bahadur Deuba and KP Sharma Oli, among others.