Nepal PM to arrive in MP for 2-day visit; to visit Mahakaleshwar temple

Nepal PM Pushpakamal Dahal "Prachanda" will be on a two-day tour of Madhya Pradesh from Friday, during which he will visit the famous Mahakaleshwar temple in Ujjain

Nepal Prime Minister Pushpakamal Dahal "Prachanda" will be on a two-day tour of Madhya Pradesh from Friday, during which he will visit the famous Mahakaleshwar temple in Ujjain and a solid waste management plant in Indore run by the local civic body, officials said.

The Nepal PM is scheduled to arrive at the Indore airport around 10 am, after which he will visit the Mahakaleshwar temple, one of the 12 Jyotirlings (major places of worship of Lord Shiva) in the country, around 11.15 am, they said.

After the temple visit, he will return to Indore, where he will hold a meeting with Madhya Pradesh Governor Mangubhai Patel around 4 pm. After the meeting, he will visit a solid waste management plant run by the Indore Municipal Corporation, the officials said.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan will host a dinner in honour of Prachanda in Indore at 7.30 pm, they added.

On Saturday, the Nepalese PM will visit the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys campuses in an IT Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Indore, and leave for New Delhi later in the day, according to them.

On Thursday, Chouhan chaired a meeting with senior officials in Indore through video-conferencing to review preparations for the tour of the 68-year-old Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-Maoist) leader who assumed office in December 2022. The CM directed officials to make adequate arrangements for Prachanda's MP visit during which cultural events will also be organised, sources said.

Prachanda, along with a high-level delegation, arrived in India on Wednesday afternoon on a four-day official visit. It is the first bilateral trip abroad by the 68-year-old Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-Maoist) leader after he assumed the top office in December 2022.

On Thursday, the Nepal PM met his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in New Delhi. Both the leaders vowed to resolve the vexed boundary dispute under the spirit of friendship even as the two sides signed several major pacts including one on increasing New Delhi's import of power from the neighbouring country to 10,000 mega watt in the next 10 years.

After the meeting, PM Modi said India will continue to strive to take the relationship with Nepal to Himalayan heights.

In his media statement, Modi said he and Prachanda took many important decisions to make the partnership between the two countries a "super hit" in the future.

The Nepal PM also met President Droupadi Murmu and Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Thursday.

Nepal is important for India in the context of its overall strategic interests in the region, and the leaders of the two countries have often noted the age-old "Roti-Beti" relationship, which refers to cross-border marriages between people of the two countries.

The country shares a border of over 1,850 km with five Indian states Sikkim, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The land-locked nation relies heavily on India for the transportation of goods and services and its access to the sea is through India.