Political parties have been making slogans related to nationalism regarding the issue of removing the Indian Army camp in Nepali territory of Darchula. This slogan has also given the parties an opportunity to criticize each other by saying who is the real nationalist.

The tendency of parties to say one thing when in power and another when in opposition has also been overshadowing the issue of Kalapani. This issue has been coming up for years. Past incidents have shown that sometimes this issue has been used as a slogan to form and topple governments.

After the Mahakali Treaty between Nepal and India was passed by the parliament in Asoj 2053, the issue of Kalapani used to receive discussion from time to time.

After Lokendra Bahadur Chand became the Prime Minister in Falgun 2053, this issue received discussion again. But after coming to power, the tendency of every Prime Minister to deviate from the issue by talking abstract things did not stop. Before Chand became Prime Minister, the all-party parliamentary committee chaired by the Speaker had also formed a parliamentary committee to study the issue of Kalapani. The joint parliamentary committee was discussing the preparation of a detailed report (DPR) of the Pancheshwar project and determining the source of the Mahakali river. In the course of continuing the same discussion, when Prime Minister Chand and Foreign Minister Prakash Chand Lohani, who were invited to the meeting organized by the parliamentary committee on 2054 Baisakh 8, were absent, the lawmakers questioned the government's intentions. The meeting was organized to understand the government's perspective and demand a progress report by arranging the Prime Minister's time. The Prime Minister, who had not attended the previous meeting, was absent from the latest one as well, so the issue of determining the source of the Mahakali and preparing the DPR of the Pancheshwar project was again in the background. On that day, Prime Minister Chand left for a tour of the East, skipping the meeting scheduled a week ago.

Foreign Minister Lohani was also busy at the International Conference Center to watch a film from the Indian Film Festival, after skipping the committee meeting. Prime Minister Chand had sent a letter to the committee through Minister of State for Water Resources Rajiv Parajuli. In the letter, he mentioned that a Nepal-India High-Level Joint Technical Committee was working to delimit the status of the Mahakali. The letter mentioned that Nepal had sent the Pancheshwar Report to India, but India had not received any information about the report.

India is not aware of the Mahakali Treaty.

Nepal's parliament had passed the Mahakali Treaty on the night of Asoj 4, 2053. But India was not formally informed about the passage of the treaty for 8 months. Prime Minister Chand had sent a written statement to the parliamentary committee stating that he had not given information for various reasons. After the Prime Minister's letter was read out in the joint committee meeting, the MPs expressed strong dissatisfaction.

MPs Subash Nembang, Bhim Rawal, Urwadatta Pant, Amarraj Kaini and others had protested saying that the government was not serious about determining the source of the Mahakali River and preparing the report on the Pancheshwor Project. The MPs had protested saying that this situation had arisen because the government had not taken the issue seriously.

The government itself was in confusion

Not only the Mahakali Treaty, but the issue of the border river had become the most complicated. The government had not been able to clarify which river was the border of the Mahakali. The all-party joint parliamentary committee formed under the chairmanship of the Speaker had gone to Darchula to study and returned. But the government itself had not been able to clarify the source of the Kali River.

The members of the committee had called it government apathy. The MPs had said, ‘If the government itself is not clear, how and on what basis will the technical committee demarcate?’ Is the source of the Mahakali Limpiyadhura or Lepulek? Or is it Kalapani, where the Indian army is now?'

Limpiyadhura is the source

The MPs were among those who believed that the source of the Kali River was Limpiyadhura. The Sugauli Treaty stated that the western border of Nepal was Kali. But the source was not mentioned. Therefore, determining the source of the river was a challenging issue. The MPs were sure that Limpiyadhura was the source of the Mahakali. But the government was not able to confirm it.

Water resource experts had been saying that the branch with the largest, longest and largest catchment area should be considered the source of the river. On that basis, the MPs said that Limpiyadhura was the source of the Kali. Nepal claimed that the same basis was mentioned in the survey map of British India at the time of the Sugauli Treaty. But in 1963, when the source of the Mahakali was separated between Nepal and China and a trilateral point was established, the Lepulek area was mysteriously made the source of the Kali, leaving more than 20,000 hectares of land in the Limpia region.

Foreign Minister Lohani had been saying that the government's view was that Lepulek was the source of the Kali since the Mahakali Treaty. The lawmakers had sought the basis on which Lipulekh was the source of the Kali. India, on the other hand, did not consider Lipulekh to be the source of the Kali. The lawmakers had said that India had created an artificial source of the Kali 35 km away from Lipulekh. The lawmakers had said that a channel was made there to form the source of the Kali River.

The lawmakers had questioned why the government had not been able to understand India's view on the status of the river. The lawmakers had raised the voice that the source of the river should be made clear. Otherwise, they said, the technical committee would not be able to work.

Since Prime Minister Chand and Foreign Minister Lohani were not present at the meeting, the Joint Parliamentary Committee had given instructions to do more homework on the origin of the Mahakali as the government's vision was not clear.

The news prepared by the Joint Parliamentary Committee focused on the questions raised in the Joint Parliamentary Committee regarding the certainty of the origin of the Mahakali River, the Pancheshwor Project and the Mahakali Treaty, and was published by Kantipur Daily on 2054 Baisakh 9 under the title 'Directions to do homework on the origin of the Mahakali'.