Kalapani

Where does the Kali begin?

The border between Nepal and India’s Uttarakhand follows the Kali River, called the Mahakali further downstream. It comes from the treaty that ended Nepal’s war with the East India Company, signed at Sugauli on 2 December 1815 and ratified on 4 March 1816.^[8] In it Nepal gave up all claim to the lands west of the Kali.^[8]

Near its head the river has more than one branch, and the treaty doesn’t say which one is the Kali. No map was attached, or if there was one it has not been found.^[2] Nepal says the river rises at Limpiyadhura, its westernmost source, which would put everything east of that stream in Nepal.^[9][5] India says it begins at Kalapani, where its streams meet.^[1] Between the two readings lie Kalapani, the Lipulekh Pass and Limpiyadhura, about 370 km² by Nepali figures.^[2][9]

“The Rajah of Nipal renounces for himself, his heirs, and successors, all claim to or connextion with the countries lying to the west of the River Kali…”^[8]

Two sets of evidence

India points to tax and administrative records from the 1830s showing Kalapani as part of what is now Pithoragarh district, and to British surveys of the 1870s, including a map of 1879. Nepal has presented maps of its own from 1850 and 1856.^[1]

A Nepali columnist writing in 2020 accepted that India has held the area for nearly 200 years, while Nepal’s presence has been slight. A police post at the Lipulekh Pass dates from British times, and there is an Indian military post at Kalapani.^[2] Indian troops have been stationed there since India’s 1962 war with China.^[4] A Nepali account says Prime Minister Nehru asked King Mahendra to let retreating Indian troops stay there for a while, though no written record of the king’s consent has been found.^[10]

Some of Nepal’s own documents point the other way. Its 1961 boundary treaty with China puts the three-way junction at the Tinkar Pass, south of Lipulekh, and Nepal’s first official map, published in 1976, left the three areas out.^[2][10]

A road and two maps

In 2015 India and China agreed to use the Lipulekh Pass as a trade route, and Nepal protested to both.^[6][11][9] In November 2019 India published a new political map showing Kalapani inside Uttarakhand. Nepal said it was “absolutely not acceptable”, and India replied that the map “accurately depicts the sovereign territory of India”.^[1]

On 8 May 2020 India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh opened an 80 km road from Dharchula to the Lipulekh Pass, a shorter route for pilgrims to Kailash Mansarovar in Tibet.^[3][11] Nepal said about 19 km of it ran through its territory.^[4] On 20 May Nepal’s cabinet issued a new map placing Limpiyadhura, Lipulekh and Kalapani inside Nepal. India called it an “artificial enlargement” of territorial claims that it would not accept.^[5][3]

Nepal then wrote the map into its constitution. On 13 June 2020 all 258 members present in the lower house voted for the amendment, and the upper house passed it 57–0 on 18 June.^[5][4] According to Pradeep Gyawali, Nepal’s foreign minister at the time, India had advised Nepal not to put the dispute in its constitution, and New Delhi’s position hardened once it did.^[7]

Still open

In 2014 the two countries agreed that their foreign secretaries would handle the Kalapani and Susta disputes, but by 2026 no such meeting had been held in 12 years.^[12][11] Nepal has kept sending diplomatic notes to India and China.^[9] China’s answer has been that the matter is for Nepal and India to settle between themselves.^[7]

In May 2026 Nepal objected to India and China’s plan to run that year’s pilgrimage and restart trade through Lipulekh. India called the objection “unjustified” and Nepal’s “unilateral artificial enlargement” of its claims “untenable”, and trade through the pass resumed.^[12]