The representatives of billionaire Gautam Adani, chairman of Adani Group, who is considered close to the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, have arrived in Nepal.
This group, which has been investing in large infrastructure in India, came back to Kathmandu with the intent to invest in Nepal. According to a high-level source, representatives of Adani Group held talks with Deepak Malhotra, the owner of IMS Group, along with Binod Chaudhary in Kathmandu on Tuesday.
Last June also, the representatives of the Adani Group came to Nepal and held talks with various parties including the Chinese regarding investment. Nepal has been on this group's investment radar since last year. This group wants to invest especially in cement companies, hydropower, and other physical infrastructure.
The Adani Group, which appeared to be close to the Vishal Group, is now being coordinated by Nepal's Chaudhary Group and IMS Group. The closeness between India's Adani Group and Nepal's Chaudhary Group is increasing nowadays, as Nirvana Chaudhary, the director of Chaudhary Group, posted a photo with Gautam Adani on X.
This time, Adani Group has shown interest in the construction of Nijgadh International Airport, a national pride project.
The arrival of the representatives of Adani Group and its investment interest is viewed as meaningful at a time when the government is preparing to hold an investment summit on April 28-29 to raise investment for the construction of Nijgadh Airport.
The government is making preparations to showcase Nijgadh Airport project at the investment conference. Before that, the Nepali coordinators will negotiate with the Adani Group and reach an agreement at the conference, according to sources.
It is estimated that Rs 120 billion is required for the airport construction in the initial phase. This investment is expected to build an airport with one runway.
The government has allocated a budget to start the preparatory work for Nijgadh Airport construction in the budget of the current financial year. The Civil Aviation Authority is working to advance the process including the airport's demarcation.
Earlier, the Supreme Court had annulled the cabinet's decision to designate an area of 8,045 hectares, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report approved by the Ministry and to cut down trees. So these things have to be done again.
As all these works must be started again from scratch, the Authority will designate the area of the proposed airport based on the recommendations of the experts. The EIA will be carried out once the delineation is completed by the government.
On February 20, 2015, a notice was published in the national gazette to designate an area of 8,450 hectares for the airport. The Supreme Court has mentioned that four times more land than required has been allocated. There were 2 million 450 thousand big trees in the designated area of the airport.
The old EIA report had been approved by the Forest Ministry on May 24, 2018. However, the report was dismissed by the court saying that the EIA of Hydropower was duplicated, cutting down the forest to build an airport was not justified, and that the standard of planting 25 trees equal to cutting down one tree was revised to 10.
Upper Bheri discussed
Apart from this airport, Adani Group also wants to invest in the Upper Bheri or Bheri 1 hydropower project.
Deepak Malhotra's IMS Group holds the license for this project. IMS Group is holding talks with Adani Group to advance the project.
According to the sources, discussions were held on Monday and Tuesday regarding the purchase of 325 MW project with Deepak Malhotra.
Malhotra, chairman of IMS Group, also admitted that discussions were held with representatives of Adani Group.
"There have been some discussions on Upper Bheri, but as there is a lot of work to be done for this project, there is no situation to reach an agreement on investment cooperation immediately", he told Nepalkhabar.
This project is a partial reservoir project. The project site is in Dolpa and Rukum West of Karnali Province.
Under this project, a 35-meter high dam of the project will be constructed in the Thuli Bheri River in Ward No. 6 and 4 of Tripurasundari Municipality.
Even though, the capacity of this project was mentioned as 281 MW initially, now the capacity has been increased following identification.
