Integrated posts would be set with India Nepal border: Mukhargee

Indo-Nepal border, four integrated check posts would be set up in Bihar and the landlocked Himalayan country, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said here on Wednesday.

“In order to improve the security apparatus along the Indo-Nepal border and strengthen our traditional bond of friendship, four integrated checkposts will be created in the two countries,” Mukherjee told reporters during a brief interaction at the Indian embassy bungalow at this border town in Bihar.

Mukherjee, the first top level leader from India to visit Nepal after its recent transition to democracy, said the work on setting up the integrated checkposts would begin in April next year and would be completed by March 2011.

The minister, on a three-day visit to Nepal, said after a meeting with top officials of the MEA including Foreign Secretary Shivshanker Menon, Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), Customs and senior Bihar government officials that land had already been acquired by the two countries for the purpose.

He, however, parried questions on cross-border smuggling and Maoist infiltration into naxal-hit Bihar from Nepal.

There have been reports of alleged involvement of Nepalese Maoists in Naxalite violence in East and West Champaran districts of Bihar despite their coming to power in a coalition government in the Himalayan country. The Maoist leadership in Nepal has been consistently denying it.

Later, briefing reporters, Indian consul at Birganj in Nepal Sunil Kumar Sinha said Mukherjee reviewed preparations for setting up of two integrated checkposts each at Pantoka in Bihar’s East Champaran district and the dry port at Sirisia in Nepal.

The project to be funded entirely by India would cost Rs 244.5 crore, he said, adding India and Nepal had acquired 177 acre each for construction of the integrated checkposts.

He said the process of acquisition of an additional 68.5 acre in East Champaran district had also been initiated.

The meeting was attended among others by Indian Ambassador to Nepal, Rakesh Sood, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, Vishnu Prakash, Consul General of India in Nepal posted at border town of Birganj and others. Mukherjee had yesterday ‘reactivated’ the existing bilateral mechanism between the two countries to address issues including security, water resources and trade during his meeting with Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Foreign Minister Upendra Yadav.

He had also discussed with them issues related to a border dispute at Susta in Bihar. Both sides have been accusing each other of encroaching on their land.

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