India-Nepal Border Disputes: Lipulekh and Susta Explained

India and Nepal share one of the most unusual borders in the world. It stretches over 1,850 kilometres, remains open for the free movement of citizens, and is bound together by deep cultural, religious, and family ties. Yet beneath this friendly relationship lie a few stubborn territorial knots. Two of them, Lipulekh in the far Himalayan northwest and Susta along the plains of Bihar, refuse to go away. Each represents a completely different kind of dispute, one rooted in how an old treaty is read, the other in how a river behaves. Understanding both tells us a great deal about why even the friendliest neighbours can struggle to agree on exactly where one country ends and the other begins.

The treaty that started it all
The Lipulekh and Kalapani dispute
The argument over a river’s source
How the dispute escalated
The Susta dispute
When a river changes the map
Two different legal arguments
Why these disputes are so difficult to resolve
The mechanisms built to find solutions
Two disputes, one lesson

The treaty that started it all

Both disputes trace back to a single document: the Treaty of Sugauli, signed in 1816 between the Kingdom of Nepal and the British East India Company after the Anglo-Nepalese War. The treaty fixed the Kali River (called the Mahakali in Nepal) as Nepal’s western boundary, meaning territories to its east would belong to Nepal. On paper this sounds simple. In practice, the treaty created problems that survive to this day.

The reason is straightforward. The treaty named a river as the boundary but never clearly defined where that river actually originated, nor did it come with an accurate map. In 1816, no scientific survey of these remote Himalayan heights existed. The roots of the tensions therefore lie in the Sugauli Treaty and the various maps produced by British India afterwards, each of which could be interpreted to favour one side or the other. When a boundary depends on a feature that nobody precisely located, future arguments are almost guaranteed.

The Lipulekh and Kalapani dispute

The first major dispute sits at a high-altitude tri-junction where India, Nepal, and China all meet. It covers the connected areas of Limpiyadhura, Kalapani, and Lipulekh, amounting to roughly 372 square kilometres of rugged Himalayan terrain. This is not a remote technicality for either country. The region carries strategic military value, sits on the route of the Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage, and has become a powerful symbol of national pride.

The argument over a river’s source

The entire dispute hangs on one question: where does the Kali River begin? Both countries accept that the river forms the border. They simply disagree about its origin. Nepal asserts the river originates from Limpiyadhura, the westernmost source, which would place the Kalapani and Lipulekh areas inside Nepal. India instead points to a stream much further east, near Kalapani village, which shrinks Nepal’s claim and brings the contested 372 square kilometres under Indian control.

India’s position rests on records gathered after the treaty was signed. Indian authorities point to the Governor General’s ruling of 1817, which clarified the Kalapani fountain as the source of the Kali River, and to the first scientific survey of 1873 to 1877 that produced an official boundary map. India has administered the area as part of the Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand and has maintained a military presence there since 1962, partly because of its location near the China border.

How the dispute escalated

For decades the issue simmered quietly in diplomatic notes. It exploded into public attention in November 2019, when India released a new political map after reorganising Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh into union territories. That map incorporated Kalapani, Lipulekh, and Limpiyadhura, and India declined to address Kathmandu’s concerns. Tensions rose further in May 2020 when India inaugurated a road link connecting Dharchula in Uttarakhand to the Lipulekh Pass, which Nepal said passed through its territory.

Nepal responded firmly. In May 2020 the government issued its own administrative map placing the three areas within Nepal, Parliament endorsed it, and the constitution was amended in June 2020 to add the new map to the national emblem. India rejected these claims outright. The dispute also has a China dimension, because Lipulekh is used for India-China border trade, and Nepal argues that neither neighbour should conduct trade through the pass without its consent.

The Susta dispute

The second dispute is a very different kind of problem. While Lipulekh is about interpreting a treaty, Susta is about a river that simply moved. This area lies in Bihar’s West Champaran district, along the Gandak River, which Nepal calls the Narayani. It has been contested for several decades, and its cause is entirely natural rather than legal.

When a river changes the map

The 1816 treaty took the Gandak as the international boundary in this stretch, giving the right bank to Nepal and the left bank to India. When the treaty was signed, Susta sat on the right bank and was therefore part of Nepal, but over the years the Gandak changed its course and Susta ended up on the left bank, the Indian side of the river. A village that was once clearly Nepali found itself, through no human decision, on the Indian side of a shifting waterway.

This created a genuine territorial puzzle. The land never moved, but the river that defined the border did. From Nepal’s point of view, the original treaty line should hold regardless of where the water now flows. From India’s point of view, the boundary must follow the river as it actually exists today.

Two different legal arguments

The two sides invoke different principles of international law to support their claims, and this is what makes Susta so hard to settle. India argues that because the river’s course changed gradually through accretion, the boundary should follow the river’s current path, with the village now falling on the Indian side. Nepal’s supporters counter that under international case law, the original course of the river should remain the boundary, meaning the centre of the old channel is the reference point rather than the new one.

Nepal’s claims are substantial. Nepal treats the area as part of the Susta rural municipality in West Nawalparasi District and alleges that over 14,860 hectares of its land has been encroached upon by India. India, in turn, points to local population settlements, administrative governance, and land records to support its administration of the area as part of West Champaran. Because the river continues to shift, the dispute is, in a sense, never fully frozen in place.

Why these disputes are so difficult to resolve

It is worth stepping back to see why these knots remain tied despite generally warm relations. The Lipulekh dispute is a problem of treaty interpretation, where two readings of an ambiguous 1816 document collide. The Susta dispute is a problem of physical geography, where the very feature meant to mark the boundary keeps moving. Resolving the first requires agreement on history and cartography. Resolving the second requires agreement on which version of the river counts.

The open and friendly nature of the India-Nepal border, which allows citizens to cross freely, paradoxically adds to the complexity. With people, settlements, and livelihoods spread across these zones, any boundary decision affects real communities on the ground. These are not empty patches of land but places where families farm, trade, and live.

The mechanisms built to find solutions

Both countries have created institutions to manage their boundary. The Boundary Working Group, formed in 2014, handles technical tasks such as building and repairing boundary pillars and clearing the no-man’s land, but it deliberately excludes the disputed areas of Susta and Kalapani. Those sensitive issues were assigned instead to talks at the level of foreign secretaries.

Progress, however, has been slow. During Prime Minister Modi’s 2014 visit, both sides agreed that foreign secretaries would lead negotiations on these disputes, but in practice no such high-level meetings have taken place since. An Eminent Persons Group was formed in 2016 to review the full range of bilateral relations and finalised its joint report in 2018, yet that report has still not been formally accepted. After a six-year gap caused largely by the pandemic, the seventh meeting of the Boundary Working Group resumed in New Delhi in 2025, signalling at least a willingness to keep talking.

The disputes also remain politically alive. In May 2026, Nepal’s foreign ministry again lodged a protest with India over the Lipulekh area, reaffirming that Limpiyadhura, Lipulekh, and Kalapani are Nepali territory, while India responded that the pass has been used for the Kailash Manasarovar pilgrimage since 1954. Each new development reopens an old wound, showing how a treaty signed more than two centuries ago still shapes diplomacy today.

Two disputes, one lesson

Lipulekh and Susta sit at opposite ends of the long India-Nepal border and arise from completely different causes, yet they teach the same lesson. Borders defined by natural features and old treaties are far more fragile than they appear. A river can move. A treaty can be read two ways. When that happens between neighbours bound by faith, trade, and kinship, the challenge is not hostility but the patience required to settle questions that have no easy answer. Both countries have repeatedly committed to resolving these issues through dialogue, which remains the most realistic path forward.

What do you think? Should river boundaries be permanently fixed at their original course to avoid disputes like Susta, even if the river has clearly moved? And when a centuries-old treaty is genuinely ambiguous, whose interpretation of history should carry more weight in deciding a modern border?

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Table of Contents

The treaty that started it all 🔗

The Lipulekh and Kalapani dispute 🔗

The argument over a river’s source 🔗

How the dispute escalated 🔗

The Susta dispute 🔗

When a river changes the map 🔗

Two different legal arguments 🔗

Why these disputes are so difficult to resolve 🔗

The mechanisms built to find solutions 🔗

Two disputes, one lesson 🔗