Kathmandu, July 15: The Supreme Court has quashed a six-year-old writ petition that sought legal and diplomatic intervention to tackle alleged border encroachment into Nepal’s territory.

The long-pending case, which urged the state to adopt a special legal framework to protect national boundaries, was dismissed by a division bench comprising Justices Sapana Pradhan Malla and Bal Krishna Dhakal on Monday.

While the court delivered its decision to dismiss the case, the full text of the ruling has yet to be made public. The petitioners had argued for international documentation of Nepal’s 147,181 square kilometer territory and had sought a court directive — through a mandamus order — to compel the government to take concrete diplomatic actions and adopt protective policies in response to what they claimed was negligent handling of territorial issues.

The original petitions were filed separately by advocates Kanchan Krishna Neupane, Gyanendra Raj Aran, Assistant Professor Phanindra Nepal, and others beginning November 13, 2019. They had named key state organs — including the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, the Department of Survey, and the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration — as respondents.

Despite the writ's dismissal, the issue had triggered notable governmental action in 2020, when the government unveiled a revised political map of Nepal through a constitutional amendment. The new map formally incorporated the disputed regions of Limpiyadhura, Lipulekh, and Kalapani — territories at the heart of Nepal’s long-standing border contention with India.

People’s News Monitoring Service