Kathmandu. After a long interval, sending Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, India ended its reticence and  signaled that it was positive towards starting high-level diplomatic talks with Nepal. Now, India is planning to invite Minister for Foreign Affairs Pradeep Kumar Gyawali to India.

In a regular press conference organized at the Indian Foreign Ministry yesterday,  spokesperson to the Indian Foreign Ministry Anurag Shrivastav informed that India was making arrangements to fix the dates for the visit of Nepali minister of foreign affairs. He said, “Our foreign secretary has invited the Nepali foreign minister for a meeting of a joint commission. We are trying to fix a favorable date.”

Recently, Foreign Secretary of India Harsh Vardhan Shringla had made a two-day official visit of Nepal. He had made a courtesy call on Minister of Foreign Affairs Pradeep Kumar Gyawali and forwarded him the invitation of India visit offered by S Jaishankar, foreign minister of India.

Nepal and India have not been able to hold talks at the political level after the map dispute related to Kalapani-Lipulekh-Limpiyadhura region of Nepal. For a long time, India had been reluctant to initiate talks. After the visit of Indian Foreign Secretary Shringla, the silence at the diplomatic level had been broken, however.

Before Shringla’s visit, General Manoj Mukund Naravane, COAS of the Indian Army, had made a formal visit following the visit of Samant Kumar Goyal, chief of Indian intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

The relationship between Nepal and India has been moving towards the warmer zone again after the high-level visits from India. After the visit to India by Foreign Minister Gyawali, the relationship is expected to be much stronger and cordial. Minister Gyawali most probably will visit India in the second week of December.