KATHMANDU, May 13: A goodwill visit to Nepal by India’s army chief has been a customary affair since 1970s.

Gen S. Padmanabhan’s four-day sojourn in the Himalayan kingdom, which began on Monday, can therefore be seen as an event of routine nature.

India’ army chief is paying a return visit on the invitation of his Nepali counterpart, Gen Prajwalla Rana, who is retiring in a couple of months. Ostensibly, there is nothing conspicuous about this.

Even the Indian embassy in Kathmandu did not want to project this as a high-profile military rendezvous.

Its press release on Saturday trivialized Padmanabhan’s presence in a neighbouring country for which the government of Indian has already made offers of assistance to fight Maoist insurgency.

However, it did concede that while in Nepal the general “will also visit establishments and formations of the Royal Nepal Army and meet Indian army servicemen living in Nepal.”

According to official sources, Gen Padmanabhan’s itinerary includes an audience with King Gyanendra who will give him a ceremonial sword that goes along with the title of an honorary general of Nepal’s army.

The Indian general is then scheduled to fly to the western town of Nepalgunj from where he will be ferried by a helicopter to the areas in some of the country’s remote districts.

While in Pokhara, a tourist town in the hills, the Indian general will speak to some of the pensioners of India’s Gurkha regiment.

A perception at the popular level is that the timing of the general’s travel to Nepal is anything but insignificant. And write-ups in the Indian media themselves bears this fact. “ It is time to invoke the spirit if not the letter of the 1950 treaty by providing Nepal military assistance that will enable it to marginalised the Maoists,” wrote retired major general Ashok Mehta of the Indian army more than a month before General Padmanabhan arrived in Kathmandu.