By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, Oct. 20: Joint Field Survey Teams (FSTs) of Nepal and India have constructed and reconstructed 2,035 pillars along the Nepal-India border. These pillars were either damaged or lost within the past five years.
The missing and damaged pillars were reinstalled and set up as per the GPS locations and mapping undertook by surveyors from Nepal and India, said Dayananda Joshi, a surveyor at the Department of Survey told The Rising Nepal, Sunday.
A meeting of the Border Working Group (BWG) held in Dehradun, the capital of Indian State Uttarkhand, few weeks ago, decided to complete the reinstallation of all border pillars by constructing new pillars and repairing the old ones by the end of 2022 A.D.
“Within next two years, officials from Nepal and India will most probably complete pillar construction, repair, and maintenance tasks,” he said.
The meeting generally reviewed on the work progress made by the Survey Officials’ Committee (SOC) and FSTs.
From the work progress result of 2014, 2,035 pillars were constructed and reconstructed and 1,698 were repaired. Nepal and India share 1,880 km long border spanning over 27 districts. During the survey conducted from 1980-2007, over 6000 border pillars were only counted, he said.
Meanwhile, information officer Damodar Dhakal at the Department of Survey said, there are altogether 8,553 pillars in Nepal-India borders, out of which, 3,800 were repaired.
In big rivers like Saptakoshi, Narayani, Mahakali there are around 2,400 boundary pillars, and out of which five were only constructed and reinstated to their original place with the help of GPS location, said Dhakal.
According to the last fiscal year (2018), 271 boundary pillars were repaired, 1,001 pillars were constructed, Joshi said.
Meanwhile, the Department of Survey is deploying four separate groups of field team from Nepal after the completion of Tihar festival.
According to Janak Raj Joshi, spokesperson and joint secretary at the Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation, the team will work there in the border in joint manner. The group is led by under-secretary level survey officer. The field team will return by mid-June, 2020. The team are tasked to keep the records of all those pillars that need to be constructed, repair and reinstated.
The Survey Officials’ Committee and FSTs are responsible to report all the information to BWG that led by Director General of the Department of Survey of Nepal and Indian side's Surveyor General as coordinators.
The group will mainly keep the records of those damaged, missing and those renovation awaiting border pillars and report it to the government for taking necessary steps, Joshi said.
There will not be any problem in reinstating or establishing newly constructed pillars for those missing and eroded border pillars to their previous locations with the help of GPS location, he said.
"Both the nations have GPS location of each Nepal's side border pillars although the pillar gets eroded by the monsoon flood and inundation every year, so there will be no such difficulty in its reinstatement," Joshi said.
Nepal and India share around 600 km riverine borders and especially during the monsoon period, pillars used to get washed away and many others got damaged, he said.
Meanwhile, joint-secretary and spokesperson at the Ministry of Home Affairs, Ram Krishna Subedi said that the details of those damaged, missing and maintenance required pillars received from the concerned District Administration Office and the APF office.
Concerned District Administration Officers (CDOs) should himself be responsible to keep the records of such pillars and report it to the government (Home Ministry), Subedi said.
CDOs and APF told the Ministry if in case such pillars were really missing, damaged, or corrugated. The sole responsibility of proper surveyor, record keeping and maintenance is of the Department of Survey under the Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation.