Nepal Restricts Driving to Head Off Fuel Shortage

KATHMANDU, Nepal — Nepal started imposing restrictions on vehicles’ movement on Sunday amid concerns about limited supplies of fuel and other essential commodities from India.


Trucks carrying supplies from India stopped entering the country last week as protests followed the adoption of Nepal’s new Constitution.


To address the shortages, officials in Nepal said cars would be permitted to run only on alternate days based on the last digit of their license plate number.


Shiva Tripathi, an official at the Nepal Ministry of Supplies, said Indian security personnel and customs officials had barred supply trucks from entering Nepal, citing orders from New Delhi.


“Transportation has come to a complete halt since Thursday,” he said. “So we are facing the shortage of some essential items, including petroleum products.”




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Small, landlocked Nepal depends heavily on supplies from India, whose Foreign Ministry has blamed the protests over the Constitution for the disrupted movement of oil tankers and trucks loaded with medicine, sugar, salt, food and cooking gas. The Foreign Ministry denied that restrictions had been imposed on Indian suppliers.


On Friday, hundreds of protesters blocked a bridge linking Birgunj, a Nepalese border town, with India. The area is about 200 miles from Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital.


While many in Nepal have welcomed the Constitution, which came into force last week, some ethnic groups object to the boundaries of the seven federal states that were set up. Other protesters want Nepal to be a Hindu state and not a secular one, as the Constitution stipulates.


The protests have been waning, but violence related to them has killed at least 45 people in recent weeks.


The Indian Embassy in Nepal said in a statement that Indian traders and people who transport goods had had difficulty moving within Nepal and feared for their safety. They are afraid their trucks will be looted by protesters if they are unescorted by security guards, it said.


New Delhi has said it worries that violence in southern regions of Nepal could spill into India, where a large number of Nepalese citizens work.