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India and Nepal agreed to complete the mapping of cross-border land occupation within three years, at the 13th meeting of the Survey Officials' Committee held in Lucknow from 12 to 14 August 2026.
Unmanned aerial vehicles will be used to photograph the affected stretches, and the images will be analysed jointly by both sides.
Fieldwork is expected to begin after the 2026 monsoon, in September or October.
The exercise is technical - it will record where people of one country farm or live on land belonging to the other, without settling ownership.
It refers to people of one country cultivating or living on land that, by the agreed boundary alignment, lies in the other country. It is not a territorial claim by either government. A major cause is river movement: where a river was used to demarcate the boundary, the channel shifted over the decades while the boundary line did not, leaving farmers on what became the wrong side. Nepal's Foreign Ministry has said explicitly that the issue is about occupation and land use, not about claiming territory.
Simple Analogy: If two neighbours agree the fence line runs along a stream and the stream later moves ten metres, the fence has not moved - but the crops have.
A three-year deadline set for completing the technical boundary work; not met
A fresh deadline of 2022 agreed; also missed, hit by funding gaps, the COVID-19 pandemic, boundary disagreements and weather
The Boundary Working Group again committed to finishing the technical work in three years, excluding Susta and Kalapani-Limpiyadhura-Lipulekh
Nepal's Prime Minister Balendra Shah raised the occupation issue in Parliament, after which the Foreign Ministry clarified it concerned land use, not territorial claims
13th SOC meeting in Lucknow agrees the three-year UAV mapping target, plus an annual plan and budget
The highest bilateral technical mechanism on the boundary, handling pillar construction, repair and related work
Approves the annual plan and budget for implementing what the BWG agrees; met for the 13th time in Lucknow
Carry out the actual survey, pillar repair and reconstruction on the ground
GS Paper 2 > International Relations > India and its neighbourhood; GS Paper 1 > Geography > Boundaries and rivers
General Awareness > Current Affairs > International
Current Affairs > Border management
General Awareness > Current Events
A physical marker fixing the agreed boundary line on the ground; missing or damaged pillars are a recurring source of local disputes.
A disputed area on the India-Nepal border along the Gandak river, kept outside the technical work programme.
The disputed tri-junction area near Uttarakhand, also kept outside the technical timeline.