Nepal and India agreed on Saturday to use global navigation satellite system for boundary pillars between the two neighbors. Sureshman Shrestha, a senior official at the Nepal's Department of Survey, said the third meeting of Nepal-India Boundary Working Group (BWG) finalized the target and schedule for the next field season which is expected to begin in November 2016.

"The meeting approved internationally accepted positioning system using Nepal-India Boundary Global Navigation Satellite System (NIB GNSS) for Nepal-India boundary pillars," the Nepalese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

All the 8,553 pillars on the 1,880-km-long Nepal-India border will be fitted with the NIB GNSS and monitored with the help of 83 control points. During the three-day meeting, Indian and Nepalese delegations reaffirmed the importance of effective boundary management.

"In this context, they emphasized the importance of making local authorities and people living along the border aware of the field works being conducted by joint field teams," the statement said.

The BWG is one of the highest bilateral technical mechanisms between Nepal and India, which is entrusted to restore the border pillars, undertake their reconstruction and repair by clearing the "no-man's land" on both sides of the border in line with the strip maps jointly prepared by the two countries in 2007.

However, this bilateral mechanism is not mandated to resolve two most disputed territories - Kalapani and Susta area - along the Nepal-India border, officials said. The two sides agreed to hold next meeting of India-Nepal BWG in August 2017 in India.

Source: Xinhua News Agency