Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on Monday kicked up another controversy when he claimed that the real Ayodhya lies in his country and not in India.
"Lord Ram is Nepali, not Indian," news agency ANI quoted Nepali media as saying.
According to the reports, Oli said that Ram's birthplace of Ayodhya is not located in Uttar Pradesh but near the Balmiki Ashram in Nepal. Nepal shares a border with India's most populous state.
"Till now we have remained under the belief that Ram, the man Sita married, was an Indian... he was not, he was a Nepali," Oli reportedly said.
The ties between the two nations have come under strain over the past few months after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurated a 80-km-long strategically crucial road connecting the Lipulekh pass with Dharchula in Uttarakhand on May 8. Nepal reacted sharply to the inauguration of the road claiming that it passed through Nepalese territory. India rejected the claim asserting that the road lies completely within its territory.
Nepal later updated the country's political map through a Constitutional amendment, incorporating three strategically important Indian areas.
India termed as "untenable" the "artificial enlargement" of the territorial claims by Nepal. India has handed over a diplomatic note to Nepal over the map issue, Nepalese media reports said.
Oli, under pressure to resign amidst a rift in the ruling Nepal Communist Party over his style of functioning, has alleged that some of the ruling party leaders are aligning with the southern neighbour to remove him from power after his government issued a new political map incorporating three Indian territories of Lipulekh, Kalapani and Limpiyadhura.
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