Nepal has rejected India’s offer to jointly measure Mount Everest’s height after the 2015 earthquake and will survey the peak on its own, the chief of the Himalayan nation’s survey department has said.
Nepal will, however, seek help from India and China for getting crucial data for the exercise, Nepal’s Survey Department’s Director General Ganesh Bhatta told PTI. There was controversy over height of the world’s tallest peak especially after some estimates suggested it became a little shorter in the wake of the earthquake in April 2015 that killed more than 8,000 people.
Many Western climbers use the height of 8,850 metres determined in 1999 by the National Geographic Society and Boston’s Museum of Science, in a survey that used satellite-based technology to measure the peak, says a Reuters report. In 2005, Chinese mountaineers and researchers put its height at 8,844.43 metres.
Sources in New Delhi indicated that China could be behind Nepal refusing India’s proposal to jointly measure Mount Everest which lies on the Sino-Nepal border. The Survey of India (SGI) proposed “re-measuring” Mt Everest as an ‘Indo-Nepal Joint Scientific Exercise’ with Nepal’s survey department.
“They have not responded to our proposal. Now they are saying that they are not involving either India or China. They will be re-measuring Mt Everest on their own,” Major General Girish Kumar, the Surveyor General of India
Kumar said that an Indian representative attended a meeting convened in Kathmandu, where surveyors and scientists from different countries, including China, were present.
“There was a proposal from India to help us measure Mt Everest, but we are doing it on our own,” Bhatta told PTI over phone. China had not given a proposal to re-measure Nepal, he said.
Kumar said China had measured Mt Everest in 1975 and 2005 while Indian surveyors had carried out a similar mission in 1956. The SGI had also measured the Everest during the British era.
“India was the first country under Sir George Everest’s leadership as the Surveyor General of India to have declared the height of Mount Everest and establish it as the highest peak in the world in the year 1855,” says the website of Indian government’s Department of Science and Technology.
“We won’t be crossing over into the Chinese territory for measurements. The work of summiting Everest will take place in 2019,” he said.