Buddhi Narayan Shrestha states that “Indian Armed military-men of the Indian Military Check-posts, deputed on 9 June 1952 in the northern frontier of Nepal, were put away and sent back to India by the Government of Nepal on 20 April 1969” (259). This article examines the political and security contexts that led to the deployment of these foreign soldiers and police officers on Nepali soil. It will include detail about the checkposts given in the accounts of early foreign travelers who encountered them in various remote places. The vexed disputes between Nepal and India over Lipu Lekh and Kalapani will also be examined. The great scoop comes at the end.
Buddhi Narayan Shrestha’s dates for the deployment and withdrawal of the checkposts need treating with care. We can be more certain about the withdrawal timescale because of detail given in Rishi. It gives extracts of an exclusive interview that Nepal’s then prime minister, Kirti Nidhi Bista, gave to the official English language daily, on June 25, 1969. In it he stated, no doubt at the behest of King Mahendra, that since India had not consulted Nepal either at the time of the 1962 Sino-Indian armed conflict or during the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War, the commitments with regard to mutual security based on the 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship had fallen into disuse and by the same token were no longer binding on either party (Shaha, 130). He expressed Nepal’s resentment of the term “special relationship” and stressed that “Nepal could not compromise its sovereignty for India’s so called security.” A specific demand was made for “the immediate withdrawal both of the Indian ‘wireless operators’ from the checkposts on the Nepal-China border and of the Indian Military Liaison Group.” The Indian Ministry of External Affairs initially pretended not to take notice of this interview, with a spokesman inviting a formal communication from the Government of Nepal on the subject. Eventually after much diplomatic sparring, during which India threatened to close the border, an agreement was reached in September 1969 to withdraw the checkposts by August 1970. Significantly, Nepal did not insist on scrapping the 1950 treaty.
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