Storm brews over border road

Deep Gazmer / TNN / Mar 20, 2008, 01:59 IST

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An 800-metre road in Darjeeling district threatens to snowball into a major diplomatic row with allegations that the Indian government spent Rs 1.25 lakh to build 250 metres of it in Nepalese territory.

DARJEELING: An 800-metre road in Darjeeling district threatens to snowball into a major diplomatic row with allegations that the Indian government spent Rs 1.25 lakh to build 250 metres of it in Nepalese territory.
The controversy has brought road construction to a halt, robbing hundreds of villagers of work since the project is being carried out under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).
This comes amid a campaign by the Young Communist League, affiliated to the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), against the alleged encroachment of Nepalese territory by India at a number of places along Darjeeling, Uttarakhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
The district administration is split over the issue. While the Darjeeling district magistrate admits building part of the road in Nepal was an inadvertent error, the BDO insists it is the Nepalese people who built the 250-km kutcha stretch.

The road will connect Dangujot with Tarabari village in Khoribari block of Siliguri subdivision. Work started in February this year after a survey of the area by the block office. With 100 days of job guarantee to villagers and a metalled road coming with it, the mood was upbeat. According to the blueprint, the roads starts from G Murmur house and ends in an area under Binnabari gram panchayat.
But block officials say 250 metre of the alignment falls inside Nepalese territory. But it is not a metalled road (unlike the Siliguri side) and no funds from the Indian government were used to build it, they say. "It was the locals on the Nepal side who dumped mud and sand and levelled it off to make it motorable. No government fund has been spent there," said Khoribari BDO Debashish Chatterjee, adding that a team has been sent to the area to conduct an inquiry.
Some other senior officials, however, admit to "mistakes", although they claim the 250-metre kutcha stretch has been in use since the British Raj.
"It seems there has been an inadvertent mistake. It appears that part of the road falls in Nepal territory. As no survey of the area has been done in many years, the demarcation was not clear. We have spoken to our Nepalese counterparts and sorted out the matter," said Darjeeling district magistrate Rajesh Pandey.
When questioned about the fate of the road constructed on the Nepal side, the DM said it would "remain as it is". "There is no need to demolish the road when it is benefiting the people," said Pandey.
Administration records show that it was the Binnabari gram panchayat office that conducted the survey and cleared the work order.

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