Dr Ram Sharan Mahat is back from the Dragon Kingdom and we will know how successful he has been from the pace of the joint verification process of refugees in Jhapa in the following weeks.

The official Bhutanese line is that it is committed to verifying and repatriating refugees, but it was not what its National Assembly said recently. The Assembly has taken a stand against repatriating refugees, or wants to take back only the fewest possible, says SB Subba, chairman of the Bhutan Refugees Representative Repatriation Committee (BRRRC). The Jhapa-based organisation has been urging the Nepali government to skip verification and go directly into categorisation of refugees as Bhutanese or non-Bhutanese nationals rather than wait for the screening be over.

Since refugee verification by a 10-member Nepali and Bhutanese team began in April in Khudunabari, one of the seven refugee camps in east Nepal, 940 families have been verified. 1,957 refugees call the Khudunabari Camp home. So far, 5,913 of the nearly 100,000 refugees living in Jhapa have been through the process. At the current pace, the process could take as long as six years.