Kathmandu, August 12

Nepal’s Ambassador to India Deep Kumar Upadhyay said Pancheshwar multi-purpose project, Arun III and Upper Karnali hydel projects will be among the agenda that Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba could discuss with Indian leaders during his India visit.

The PM is scheduled to visit India from August 23 to 27.

Addressing an interaction organised by Reporters Club here today, Ambassador Upadhyay said Nepal could have reaped huge benefit had the government operationalised Arun III project 20 years ago.

He said there was huge goodwill for Nepal in India and ever since Narendra Modi became the prime minister of India, exchanges of high level visits were becoming more frequent and bilateral mechanisms activated. He said both Nepal and India would soon make public the details of Prime Minister Deuba’s India visit.

In response to a question, Ambassador Upadhyay said it was high time Nepal decided clearly how it wanted to seal deals with India on river resources. “We are an upper riparian country in respect to India and India is also an upper riparian country in respect to   Bangladesh.  We are free to use either the Indian  model vis-à-vis Bangladesh or any other international model but we should not keep water sharing issues undecided  for long,” Upadhyay added.

He said Nepal could attract multi-national companies working in India to invest in Nepal provided Nepal created conducive atmosphere for investment. “We need to remove bottlenecks that the foreign investors face in Nepal. We need to ensure that the projects agreed by two parties today, will move ahead unhindered in the future also,” he added.

He said India made tremendous strides in building road networks as they were on par with European standards and Nepal also needed to catch up with the pace of development. Ambassador Upadhyaya hoped that Nepal would not have to face power outage in the coming winter.