Nepal UK
Nepal's Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal telephoned UK Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis on 14 July 2026, urging London to resolve the decades-old dispute over equal pay and pensions for Gurkha veterans who served the British Army before 1993 — days after former soldiers threatened a hunger strike “unto death” in Kathmandu if their demands go unmet, and a week ahead of a fresh round of Nepal-UK-veterans tripartite talks scheduled for 21 July.
The grievance dates to a two-tier system: Gurkhas who served between 1948 and 1993 were placed under a separate legal and pension framework that denied them parity with British soldiers. On 26–28 February 2026, Nepal's Supreme Court ruled the 1947 Tripartite Agreement between Nepal, India and the UK no longer adequately protects Gurkha welfare, citing an “unequal power balance,” and directed the government to pursue a bilateral — rather than tripartite — deal with London. The court ordered the UK to share full data on serving and retired Gurkhas and set a 31 March 2026 deadline for Britain to present a schedule of solutions based on a 2018 technical report.
A subsequent round of talks in London on 18 March 2026 ended without a breakthrough. The British side reiterated it could not equalise pensions for pre-1993 veterans but proposed enhanced welfare-scheme benefits instead — an offer veterans' representatives rejected outright. “We have clear objections to that. Equal pay and pensions are entirely different from welfare benefits,” Krishna Bahadur Rai, coordinator of the British Gurkha Satyagraha United Struggle Committee and a member of the veterans' negotiating team, told the Post. Rai had written to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on 16 January 2026 demanding resolution by the end of March, reiterating an 11-point charter that includes full implementation of the 1947 Tripartite Agreement. Nineteen MPs wrote jointly to the UK government ahead of the March talks in support of the veterans' demands.
The 14 July call — arranged through the British Embassy in Kathmandu — came as Jarvis, in post only since 12 June, prepared for a UK government reshuffle the following week. Khanal told the Post he wanted the issue “resolved at the earliest possible time,” framing it as foundational to the next 200 years of Nepal-UK relations; Jarvis said resolving it remained a UK priority. The dispute matters directly to Gurkha communities in Aldershot, Folkestone, Reading and Camberley, where pension parity, welfare access and integration support hinge on the outcome. As of this report, no public outcome from the 21 July talks has been confirmed in Nepali or UK reporting — leaving the core demand for equal, backdated pensions unresolved after nearly 35 years of campaigning. This remains an open story the newsroom will track.
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