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Kathmandu Friday October 19, 2001 Kartik 03, 2058.
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Ask Koirala and Bhattarai
This refers to a news item published in a
local vernacular daily Ghatana Ra Bichar and the consequent voice of UML parliamentarian
Urba Dutta Pant raised in Parliament the other day about the "nationality
status" of Shree Anurudha Gautam, the press advisor of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur
Deuba.
I think, despite the 1950 Peace and
Friendship Treaty with India, many of our so-called parliamentarians seem to have been
unaware of this fact. Besides, parliamentarians, like Pant, have not realized how many
Nepali people migrated to India as a result of poverty, unemployment and political
upheavals after the Treaty. Between 1950-1961, half of the population from the three
districts - Taplejung, Panchthar and Tehrathum - migrated to northeast India due to
poverty and political upheavals. If Pant reads the novel Bashai by Lil Bahadur Chhetri, he
will come to know what led the Nepalese of these districts to northeast India. There are
as many as four million Nepalese working in different cities in India, particularly from
western Nepal due to poverty and lack of employment in this country. There are about three
million Nepalese spread across seven states of northeast India but have their families or
house in Nepal. For example, fifty percent of the Nepalese living in Jhapa district either
still have their business in northeast India or have come from northeast India. The
remittance that comes into this country from northeast India alone amounts to over one
billion rupees annually. Do these Nepali too are Indians? Seventy percent of Nepalese
living in this country either lived in India but moved later to Nepal or have their
relatives in India. It is good that a joker like Pant and a few illiterates who claim
themselves Nepalese have raised the nationality status of Gautam.
NC president Girija Prasad Koirala and former
Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai are the right people who can answer Pant’s
question.
Lal Bahadur KC
Buddhanagar, Kathmandu |
