Title: India encroaching Nepal's Lands

India encroaching & built a road in Nepal

Posted by barunroy on March 19, 2008

Darjeeling, March 18: The Darjeeling district authorities have constructed a kutcha road inside Nepal under the 100-day work scheme and the neighbour has accused India of encroaching into its territory.

The Himalayan kingdom has also complained of Indian troop movement within its boundary, prompting the district administration to stop work on the road immediately.

However, the 500-metre road inside Nepalese territory — across the border from Binnabari village in Khoribari, around 50km from Siliguri — is apparently the result of shoddy work by local officials.

No survey of the land was carried out before the residents of Binnabari started working on the road under the rural employment guarantee scheme, in mid-February.

Projects under this scheme are prioritised by villagers through panchayats before the block office sanctions funds. The block office usually gets a sub-assistant engineer to conduct a survey before launching a project.

The Rs 10-lakh project to connect Dangujot and Tarabari villages in the Binnabari panchayat area was almost complete when Nepalese officials complained about the movement of armed Indian personnel inside their territory.

The Sashastra Seema Bal, which has camps in both the Indian villages, sometimes patrols the small footpath, between pillars 116 and 117, recently turned into a road.

A probe ordered by the Darjeeling district administration revealed that the road was on Nepalese soil.

“The area within the international pillars numbered 116, 117 and 118 is triangular in shape. As a result, there has been some confusion ,” said a land reforms official.

Khoribari block development officer Debashish Chatterjee declined comment, saying the details could be obtained from village panchayat official Ram Singhia Mahato.

Mahato, the CPM deputy chief of Binnabari, said the root of the confusion lay in the small path that existed “since the time of the British”.

“The villagers always used it. We just broadened it and turned it into a road,” he said.

The Darjeeling administration insisted that the dispute had been “amicably” solved. “There was some truth in the complaint and we stopped work immediately. The Nepalese are not seeking a written explanation and the issue has been amicably solved,” district magistrate Rajesh Pandey said.

In June 2003, Nepal had raised a hue and cry when India repaired a pillar on the border near Pashupati. Kathmandu then accused India of encroaching two feet within its territory by widening the pillar.

Disputes along the Jhapa-Darjeeling border have prevented the construction of pillars in the Sandakphu-Phalut area and along the Mechi. Nepal has also accused India of not notifying it before erecting pillars in some places. [Vivek Chhetri | The Telegraph] ...