Although it is seven months since K. P. Sharma Oli took over the reins as Nepal’s prime minister, he has yet to visit India, the country’s powerful southern neighbor. An invitation from New Delhi remains elusive.
A new government in Nepal has usually been followed by a Nepali prime ministerial visit to New Delhi in response to an Indian invitation. That has long been the tradition in India-Nepal relations. This was the case in Oli’s previous prime ministerial terms as well. He visited India early in his tenure in 2016 and 2018.
That has not happened so far, and it has triggered much speculation in Kathmandu. Many in Nepal believe that New Delhi is displeased with several of Oli’s moves in previous prime ministerial terms.
During his first term as prime minister, Oli strongly criticized the Indian blockade of 2015. In 2020, his government published a new political map of Nepal that included the disputed territories of Lipulekh, Kalapani, and Limpiyadhura, which are under Indian control at present. These are being cited as some of the visible and invisible irritants underlying India’s displeasure.
Domestically, India’s disapproval of Oli and his repeated provocations of India have boosted his Nepali nationalist credentials. It has won him support in Nepal. In the 2022 general election, although his Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) was relegated to the second position under the first-past-the-post system, it won the largest number of popular votes under the proportional representation system.
Oli isn’t the only Nepali prime minister to not be invited by India. Since 2008, when Nepal became a republic, two other prime ministers — the CPN-UML’s Jhalanath Khanal in 2011 and the Nepali Congress’ Sushil Koirala, who was in New Delhi for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in May 2014, but wasn’t extended an invite for an official bilateral visit — didn’t make the cut.
Oli has already made an official visit to China, making him the first post-2008 prime minister to make Beijing the destination of his first official bilateral foreign visit.
People close to Oli say he waited for India’s invitation, but with no invitation from Delhi in the offing, he headed to Beijing.
When asked about his decision to make China rather than India the destination of his first official visit as prime minister, Oli said: “We have two great neighbors. We need to have good relations with both. [The] China visit doesn’t affect our ties with India. There is no reason [for it] to happen so.”
Interestingly, some of South Asia’s other leaders who started off being perceived as hostile to Delhi did get the invitation for an official visit. In October last year, Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu, who ran on an “India Out” election campaign, made an official visit to India. Sri Lanka’s newly-elected President Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the National People’s Power (NPP) too was in India on an official visit in December. Dissanayake leads the Janata Vimukti Peramuna, the core of the NPP, which was virulently anti-India in the past.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Oli on his appointment as prime minister for the third time in July last year. A meeting between the two leaders on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly followed in September.
In November, Nepal’s Foreign Minister Arzu Rana Deuba called on Modi during her Delhi visit and invited him to Nepal. Modi “accepted the invite for a visit to Nepal on mutually convenient dates to be decided through diplomatic channels.”
However, Modi has not come to Nepal, nor did India invite Oli for an official India visit.
In December, the Nepali foreign minister headed to Delhi for another visit. However, she could not meet high-level Indian leaders. This was attributed to India’s displeasure over Nepal signing a BRI Framework agreement with China during Oli’s visit. Already a BRI member state, Nepal’s latest inking of the framework agreement was just a formality, providing continuity to its BRI participation since 2017.
According to noted Nepali author and podcaster Sudheer Sharma, India’s reluctance to invite Oli is due not only to policy differences mainly on the map and borders, but also to ego issues. Both Modi and Oli are egotistic, he says.
Sharma says India’s invitation to the Nepali prime minister may not come when Oli wants but only when India deems it necessary.
Gopal Khanal, a former foreign affairs adviser to Oli, said India’s unwillingness to invite Oli is a reflection of India’s choice. As the prime minister of an independent, sovereign country, Oli has the right to decide which country to go to for his first bilateral visit based on Nepal’s national interest. If invited by India, “PM Oli will visit at a mutually agreeable time,” Khanal said.
Oli may not have visited India since the start of his fourth prime ministerial term, but this has in no way hampered cooperation.
Since November 15, hydropower-rich Nepal has started selling electricity to Bangladesh via India based on a trilateral accord signed on October 3. Oli and Modi created trade history in 2019 when they inaugurated South Asia’s first cross-border oil pipeline.