No change in foreign secy’s Nepal visit, say officials amid buzz over PM Oli’s future
Foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla’s visit is expected to help improve relations between the two countries and will focus on deepening people-to-people tiesa
Foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla will meet Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on 26 November during his two-day visit designed to cement people-to-people ties of the two neighbours, people familiar with the matter said on Friday, insisting that there was no change in the schedule of India’s top diplomat against the backdrop of political turmoil in Kathmandu.
Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli is facing a huge challenge from within the ruling Nepal Communist Party (AFP)
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“The foreign secretary’s itinerary is intact. There has been no change,” a top diplomat told Hindustan Times, responding to buzz in Kathmandu that New Delhi could put off Shringla’s visit amid the uncertainty around PM Oli.
The visit is the first formal diplomatic contact between the two sides after relations between the two neighbours nosedived after Nepal opposed an 80 km-border road to Lipulekh region, which is claimed by Nepal. Kathmandu responded by issuing a new map that showed Indian territories of Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura as part of Nepal.
The Indian foreign secretary’s visit is expected to help put bilateral ties back on an even keel and will focus on deepening people-to-people ties. Apart from PM Oli, Shringla is scheduled to meet his counterpart Bharat Raj Paudyal, who took charge just last month, foreign minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali, and call on President Bidhya Devi Bhandari as well.
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Shringla’s visit will take place at a time PM Oli faces the third, and according to reports from Kathmandu, the most serious challenge to his authority from within the ruling Nepal Communist Party where he is pitted against Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known by his nom de guerre Prachanda.
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Shringla’s visit will take place at a time PM Oli faces the third, and according to reports from Kathmandu, the most serious challenge to his authority from within the ruling Nepal Communist Party where he is pitted against Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known by his nom de guerre Prachanda.
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Pushpa Kamal Dahal, according to Kathmandu Post, has presented a political document that accuses PM Oli of failing to govern the country that has provoked a stinging response from the prime minister at a party meeting this week.
The communist party’s secretariat is due to meet on November 28, which will be followed by its 44-member Standing Committee meeting on December 3. PM Oli is in the minority in these committees.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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