Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal on Tuesday said the Himalayan nation will seek balanced relations with both New Delhi and Beijing, even as the ruling coalition in its common minimum programme (CMP) vowed to retrieve territories allegedly occupied by India.

Dahal, popularly known as Prachanda, won the trust vote with 268 of the 275 lawmakers in the lower house of Nepal’s Parliament supporting the confidence motion moved by him. Only two voted against it.

The Nepali Congress, the main opposition party, also voted in favour of the motion moved by Prachanda, whose party, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre), is running the government in alliance with K P Sharma Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist) and others.

Prachanda later said that his government’s foreign policy would be guided by Nepal’s national interest, but added that Nepal would seek balanced and friendly relations with all countries, including its two big neighbours – China and India.

The ruling coalition, however, pledged in its CMP that it would retrieve the territories that Nepal claimed as its own, but accused India of illegally occupying. The CMP, which was formally made public just a day before the trust vote, had no reference to Nepal’s territorial dispute with China.

Read  | Dahal’s opportunism spells trouble for Nepal

New Delhi’s relations with Kathmandu suffered a setback after the Oli’s government in 2020 ratcheted up the Nepal-India dispute over the Lipulekh-Kalapani-Limpiyadhura area.

Oli had also got a new map, showing nearly 400 sq km of India’s areas as part of Nepal, endorsed by parliament of his country, apparently at the behest of China.

But relations between New Delhi and Kathmandu were back on track after Oli was dethroned and Sher Bahadur Deuba of the Nepali Congress took over as the prime minister in July 2021.

Prachanda, who had led a bloody Maoist insurgency in Nepal, has hinted that he would visit New Delhi first during his third term as the PM. But India is wary of Oli, who has emerged as the kingmaker in the country.