By Purushottam P. Khatri

Kathmandu, Nov. 18: Nepali Army Headquarters has established a separate directorate office that will solely look after the border management, survey of the land and protection of important and historical treaties and agreements reached with the neighbouring countries.
The Headquarters has named the newly established directorate as Survey and Border Monitoring Directorate.
The NA Headquarters had established the directorate following the ministerial level decision of the Ministry of Defence held in April 2019 and after the Headquarters received the letter of the decision for doing so.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Ishwor Pokharel through a minister-level decision in January 2019 had instructed the Army Headquarters to form the new directorate.
"The letter from the Defence Ministry of this decision was forwarded to the Army Headquarters in January 2019 and we followed the instruction accordingly," Brigadier General and spokesperson at Nepali Army Headquarters told The Rising Nepal on Sunday.
The Directorate has four divisions- border monitoring coordination division, Survey Division, Treaties and Agreements Research and Study Division and Arrangement Division- that included technical experts from all quarters of the lined Ministries.
According to Pandey, they had established the Directorate at the Army Headquarters which will work on an ad-hoc basis for the time being until it receives required staff. The Directorate has come into operation after receiving the direction from the Ministry.
The directorate was formed under the vision of the national security policy that was endorsed by the present government on March 18, according to Pandey. The directorate will be headed by a Brigadier General.
The new directorate will work under direct supervision of the Secretariat of the Chief of the Army Staff (CoAS).
Meanwhile, the newly designated spokesperson and joint secretary at the Defence Ministry, Santa Bahadur Sunar, said that he could not get the decision of similar notice given to the NA that had ministerial decision.
“I went through the records and also consulted with my office members, but they too could not find the documents of such decision and about direction given to the NA for forming the directorate,” Sunar told The Rising Nepal over the telephone.
The ministerial decision has mandated the NA to collect survey details and work on the protection of treaties and agreements that signed with our neighbouring countries.
According to Sunar, Ministry of Defence had made the decision to establish separate directorate at the Army Headquarters on March 5, 2019.
Following the decision, the Defence Ministry wrote a letter to this regard to the NA on March 28, 2019 for initiating a process to establish the directorate. After the order, the NA established the directorate in Mid-July, 2019.
This means the government took the decision to establish a separate Directorate at the Army Headquarter before the Indian government released their new map of the country on November 2.