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US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Affairs Donald Lu is arriving in Nepal on Thursday.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he will stay in Nepal only for one day.

His visit to Nepal, at a time when the parties are divided over the issue of implementing the State Partnership Program (SPP), has been taken meaningfully.

The government had directed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to inform the United States that Nepal will not be a part of the SPP.

But, the Ministry has not informed the United States about the issue yet.

On Wednesday, the International Relations Committee of the House of Representatives had directed the government to make Nepal's position clear on the SPP.

In recent times, the ruling and the opposition parties have been debating on the issues of Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and SPP.

Six fringe communist parties have announced protests against the MCC and SPP.

Earlier, Lu, who visited Nepal on November 17, 2021, had held separate meetings with Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli, CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, and Foreign Minister Narayan Khadka among other leaders.

Ideologically, CPN (Maoist Center) and India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are polar opposites. The former is a communist outfit while the latter is a conservative Hindu nationalist.

This ideological difference may have crossed the mind of Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal when he met BJP President J.P. Nadda in the third week of July. The BJP chief, perhaps to break ice, had told Dahal that there was one similarity between the two parties: both worked for the uplift of the oppressed and marginalized communities.

The two leaders agreed to enhance party-to-party relations through exchanges of delegations by putting their ideological differences aside, in what was the first time that the BJP had officially extended an olive branch to the Maoist party.

But Dahal is not the first Nepali politician to be so welcomed by the BJP in recent times. On April 1, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who was in India on an official visit, had also reached the BJP’s office and held talks with Nadda.

“We had fruitful discussions over strengthening and deepening ties between India and Nepal, especially old-age people bond. We also discussed ways to further party-to-party relations,” Nadda said after his meeting with Deuba.

Exchanges between the BJP and the NC, however, had begun before Deuba’s visit. In August 2021, BJP foreign affairs head Vijay Chauthaiwale visited Nepal at the invitation of the Congress. Similarly, in October 2021, BJP invited a delegation of Congress party led by former foreign minister Prakash Sharan Mahat.

Mahat’s visit was aimed at strengthening ties between the Deuba government and India.

Though Dahal during his recent trip also met with Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and other high-level government officials, he was in India at BJP’s invitation.

The Indian ruling party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also sent invitations to other party leaders, including CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli.

Between 2018 and 2021, the two parties had a series of interactions. In December 2020, BJP foreign affairs head Chauthaiwale had visited Nepal at the invitation of UML leader Bishnu Poudel.

Over the past few years, BJP has started reaching out to the political parties of South Asian countries. Political analyst Arun Subedi, who closely tracks BJP’s politics, says the party wants “a strong conservative force in Nepal”.

“BJP is trying to cultivate conservative leaders within the major political forces in order to serve India’s security and strategic interests in Nepal,” adds Subedi.

BJP’s ideological wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is already expanding its presence in Nepal.

Unlike in the past, the BJP’s influence in the foreign policy conduct of Nepal government, especially in neighboring countries, is also increasing.

For instance, BJP foreign affairs head Chauthaiwale played an important role in opening the channel of communication between Nepal and India in 2020. At the time bilateral relations had been strained after the KP Oli government endorsed a new political map of Nepal incorporating areas India claims as its own.

Similarly, NC leaders roped in BJP in order to improve relations with the Indian government after Deuba came back to power.

Of late, the Modi government has been trying to deal with the political forces of neighboring countries with the BJP at the front. To serve its interest, it is adopting a policy of working with whichever party comes to power. 

In Nepal, the BJP’s outreach has contributed to the establishment of a channel of communication at the political level, availing Nepali leaders a chance to voice their concerns at the top political level.

Historically, there have been very few interactions between Nepali political parties and the BJP. BJP emerged as a strong political force only after 1990. Traditionally, the NC had cordial ties with the Indian National Congress and another socialist party. Similarly, the communist parties of Nepal were close to India’s leftist forces.

When the BJP came to power with a thumping majority in 2014, Modi renewed India’s neighborhood policy and one of its key components was elevating ties with political leaderships of neighboring countries. That is why during his Nepal visit, Modi met leaders from across the political spectrum.

Nihar R. Nayak, a New Delhi-based researcher, says the BJP started reaching out to Nepali political parties after realizing that there was a gap in communication.

“BJP has already ruled India for 10 years and is planning to do so for another 5-10 years. It thus wants to build ties with all political parties of neighboring countries, irrespective of their ideology,” he says.

Before 2014, India was engaging at the individual leadership level. But since the BJP came to power, “India has started engaging at the institutional level, which is a major departure in its neighborhood policy,” adds Nayak. 

However, there are some differences between the BJP-led government and the party itself on some key issues related to neighboring countries. The BJP and its ideological wing RSS stress cultural nationalism and Hindu state in Nepal. But the Modi government steers clear of these issues at the governmental level.

It is not only Nepali politicians who have been meeting the BJP leaders in recent times. In June, the party had invited the ambassadors of BIMSTEC countries, Europe, South Asia, and East Asian countries to the party headquarters—all of which are a part of the ‘Know BJP’ initiative.

Envoys of other countries are also keen to build party-to-party ties between the BJP and political parties of their respective countries.

The BJP aims to interact with the political parties of more than 150 countries.  In meetings with their envoys, the party chief has been known to inform the guests about BJP’s ideology, structure, functioning, and the welfare works it has been carrying out. 

The BJP claims to be the largest party in the world with around 180 million members, almost double that of the China Communist Party.  

The political parties of other countries are as keen to decipher the BJP’s unmatched organization-building formula.

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s wife and Nepali Congress central member Arzu Deuba, who is currently in India for treatment, held a meeting with Indian BJP foreign affairs Chief Vijay Chauthaiwale in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Chauthaiwale has posted photos of his meeting with Deuba on social media.

He tweeted that he was happy to meet Dr Arju Rana Deuba in New Delhi after six months.

Deuba has been undergoing treatment at the New Delhi-based Max Hospital for the past few days.

She also met CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal who had gone to visit India at the invitation of BJP.

After the parliamentary probe committee failed to find alleged entry of unauthorized persons in the Finance Ministry on the eve of budget announcement, experts have suggested the panel conduct a polygraph test of former Finance Minister Janardan Sharma and the staffers of the Ministry involved in making the budget to find the truth behind the incident.  

Former Home Secretary Govinda Prasad Kusum said that the investigation can be done by other methods to find whether the CCTV footage has been deleted or not.

He said that the authority can also take call records of the accused.

“No one can take the call detail records without taking permission from the concerned authority. It can be taken in a secret way if the investigation does not reach a conclusion,” he said, adding, “There is a provision to take call detail records in the issues of public concern and national security.”

He was of the opinion that it is a violation of the law to say that the hard drive could store the data for only 13 days or 16 days.

Former Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Nepal Police Hemanta Malla Thakuri said that both the Parliament and the government are heading towards the wrong path in the finance minister case.

He said that the investigation has not reached a logical conclusion as the parliamentary committee took the wrong way instead of carrying out the investigation by calling police.

“The government had to protect the scene and the evidence soon after the incident came to light,” he said, adding, “The evidence of the incident is not limited to the Finance Ministry.”

Thakuri was of the opinion that the Parliament had made a mistake not by directing the government to conduct investigation of the incident site.

“The Parliament should have taken the help of Nepal Police. The Parliament and the government did not think it was necessary,” he said.

The former DIG suggested an investigation of the incident site.

He went on to say that it is important to take the call detail records and track the location.

Thakuri further said that the parliamentary committee has not fully utilized its rights yet.

“The committee should have made the working procedure. It has the right. Why didn’t the committee use it? This is a matter of doubt,” he said.