Home Minister Gurung leaves for India to attend BIMSTEC ministerial meet

Kathmandu / Oct 12: Home Minister Sudhan Gurung has left here for India to attend the home ministerial meeting of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC).

Minister Gurung left Kathmandu for New Delhi at 1:00pm, according to Home Ministry. He is scheduled to address the BIMSTEC event tomorrow. The event will be attended by the ministers looking after internal security in the member countries- Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

The meeting dwells on regional cooperation on the pressing issues such as drug trafficking, human trafficking and sale, money laundering and terrorist financing, disaster safety and cybercrimes. The Home Ministry further informed that even the issues and documents passed by various mechanisms relating to security under the BIMSTEC would be endorsed and declaration issued accordingly.

Nepal is learnt to be prioritizing the issues like reduction of risks caused by natural hazard, strengthening of early warning and regional cooperation on integrated rescue and relief efforts.

It is the first official visit of Home Minister Gurung since he assumed the post.

The high-level mechanism on security, which is an instrumental initiative for cooperation under BIMSTEC is meeting for the first time in India. This mechanism was envisioned during the fourth BIMSTEC summit held in 2018.

The Home Minister is scheduled to hold meetings with his counterparts from the member states. He will return home on October 14.RSS