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India’s Ministry of External Affairs on Saturday instructed its agencies to ease restrictions on freight movement across the Nepal-India border, according to Nepal’s ambassador to India Deep Kumar Upadhyay.
Talking to Nepali Times over phone from New Delhi, Upadhyay said: “Indian officials have agreed to allow all the stranded containers to enter Nepal.”
He added: “Nepal’s customs officials now need to work day and night to bring the stranded cargo.”
The blockade was lifted after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned to India from the UN General Assembly and Nepal undertook efforts to amend the recently-promulgated constitution to address demands of the dissenting Madhesi parties.
Apparently after Nepal’s top political parties ignored India’s request to postpone the constitution writing process and promulgate the new charter only after ‘a broad-based agreement’ with the Madhesi dissenters, supply of essential commodities to Nepal was cut off two weeks ago.
India, however, had denied imposing a blockade against Nepal. Vikas Swarup, Spokesperson for Ministry of External Affairs of India, told the International New York Times: ‘there is no blockade from our side.”
India had claimed that disruption in the freight movement was caused by the political unrest over the new constitution in Nepal’s plains region.
Nepal had started rationing fuel after the blockade. Private vehicle owners cannot buy fuel, and only limited amounts of petrol and diesel are being sold to public vehicles. Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) has also stopped providing aviation fuel for international aircrafts.
The blockade sparked off protests in Nepal. Modi had won hearts of Nepalis during his two back-to-back visits to Kathmandu last year, but he faced criticism for his ‘intervention’ in Nepal’s internal affairs after the blockade.
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