The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: Seven months after the announcement, India and Nepal formally inked the agreement for export of 10,000 megawatt of electricity from the Himalayan nation to the South Asian giant over a period of 10 years.
During Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s first foreign visit in his third stint as Nepal’s prime minister last June, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced that they had initiated an agreement for New Delhi to import 10,000 MW of electricity over a decade.
The agreement for long-term power trade was signed during external affairs minister S. Jaishankar’s visit to the Nepali capital on Thursday (January 4). It was inked by Gopal Sigdel, Nepal’s secretary at the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, and Indian power secretary, Pankaj Agarwal.
It constituted one of the five agreements, with the signing ceremony attended by Jaishankar and his Nepali counterpart, N.P. Saud, both of whom had earlier co-chaired the joint commission meeting. Additionally, they inaugurated three cross-border power transmission lines.
The other pacts were related to the implementation of high-impact community development projects, cooperation in renewable energy development, launch of Nepali space satellite, and transfer of the fifth tranche of post-Jajarkot earthquake relief supply.
A group of Nepali civil society activists, including former bureaucrats, has expressed concerns over Kathmandu signing the power trade agreement.
“We find the decision to guarantee 10,000 MW of Nepal’s hydroelectricity for the Indian market problematic, as this also affects Nepal’s flexibility in relation to stored water as a natural resource. Because hydropower is not just a tradeable commodity but also intrinsically linked to the use of water as a resource, we demand that decisions be reached only through wide national discussion and parliamentary oversight,” said the statement issued by the activists.
They also said that agreements signed on Thursday would undermine Nepal’s independence and sovereignty. “We also protest against the Dahal government reaching agreements with New Delhi in a secretive manner without adequate information provided to the polity and the general public,” they said.
The statement also criticised Nepal government’s decision to give a go-ahead for “grants of up to NPR 20 crore outside the Nepal government’s budgetary processes [as it] will gravely impact the country’s political sphere”.
The statement was referring to the increase in maximum outlay of India’s high-impact community development projects from NPR 5 crore to 20 crore.
The programme, which started in 2003, aimed at providing aid for short-gestation projects like hospitals, schools, sanitation, drinking water, embankment. Till now, as per the Indian embassy, NPR 1,155 crore (approximately Rs 722 crore) worth of aid has been given for 535 high-impact community development projects.
Earlier in the day, Jaishankar also made a courtesy call on President Ramchandra Paudel and Prime Minister Dahal.
There is no clarity yet on whether Nepal raised any of the contentious issues, such as the boundary dispute over Kalapani, Lipulekh, and Limpiyadhura, as well as the revision of the 1950 peace and friendship treaty based on the report of the Eminent Persons Group, in any of the meetings.