With Nepal crisis nearing boiling point, NSA Doval skips first leg of PM Modi's US visit

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval will reportedly be flying out on Friday to join Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the US, after delaying his departure on account of the crisis in Nepal. He stayed on in New Delhi as India gets deeper entrenched in the political strife across the porous border. [caption id=“attachment_2432632” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] FIle photo of Ajit Doval. AFP[/caption] The NSA was called in for consultations with India’s Ambassador to Nepal, Ranjit Rae, after agitations in the Terai region of Nepal against the newly-promulgated Constitution. Government officials told The Economic Times that the NSA, who is likely to travel to the US on Friday, has stayed back to handle what is emerging as the ‘biggest foreign policy challenge’ in recent times for the government. Doval missed Modi’s bilateral meetings with such leaders as Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina — with whom the PM held his third meeting in recent months  — but is expected to arrive in the US in time for Modi’s meeting with President Barack Obama. In June, Doval had stayed on in India when Modi made a state visit to Bangladesh, in order to plan the operation against militants on the India-Myanmar border. The report in The Economic Times adds that the crisis in Nepal is showing no ‘signs of abating, even as India has been urging its neighbour to make the new Constitution inclusive to meet the demands Madhesis and others’. And within this context, a lot depends on what Doval was able to accomplish in the past two days.