By Kokila Dhakal
Ilam, Sept. 18: Maintenance of age-old border pillars that have been lost or in dilapidated conditions in the eastern district of Ilam has been mired in limbo for years now.

Though Nepal-India Joint Survey team is tasked with keeping the record and monitoring of such pillars, the team has yet to visit the places because of various reasons, including the coronavirus pandemic.
Chief District Officer of Ilam, Dhurba Bahadur Khadka, said that many borders demarcating Nepal-India border had been missing from the Sandakpur-Jirmale area in the district.
The team had conducted monitoring and kept the records of such pillars during their survey conducted from 2013 to 2014.

During the survey, Nepali team members had identified three major border pillars called Junge Pillar numbering 80, 81 and 82, along with 10 subsidiaries and 29 minor pillars that had gone missing. Three other reflective pillars set up for showing direction and location placed instead of the missing pillars, too, had been reported missing.
According to the record of the Department of Survey, the area from Sandakpur to Jirmale should have 107 pillars in total, including all three categories of pillars.

As per the agreement between the Survey Team, reconstruction, repairing and construction of new odd-numbered pillars should be done by Nepal and even-numbered ones by India.

“There should still be a total of 208 pillars from Sandukpur to Jirmale. Of them, 25 were major pillars, 137 subsidiaries and 46 minor pillars. Besides, 99 have been reported missing to date,” CDO Khadka said.
“We have not received any instruction from higher authorities to begin reconstruction and maintenance of damaged pillars,” he added.

There is a provision of the deployment of the Joint Survey team in the field for monitoring only after a meeting between the officials of two countries.