"Indigenous Tamang and local communities affected by Tamakoshi-Kathmandu Transmission Line file complaint to ADB’s Compliance Review Panel", 22 August 2025

Indigenous Tamang and local communities of Bojheni in Shankharapur municipality in the northeast of Kathmandu filed a complaint today with the Compliance Review Panel (CRP) of the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) Accountability Mechanism. In the complaint, they have requested the CRP to ensure ADB’s Safeguards policy and procedural compliance in relation to their demands of relocation of the Tamakoshi–Kathmandu 220/400 kV Transmission Line and its substation in Bojheni being forcefully constructed on their lands. The transmission line is being built as the part of the Electricity Transmission Expansion and Supply Improvement Project and the substation under the Power Transmission and Distribution Efficiency Enhancement Project under the ADB project. Both the projects are being implemented by Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), the State owned sole utility provider in Nepal. ..As per the complaint submitted by the communities organized under the Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower Project Affected Struggle Committee, the substation and the transmission towers/lines in Bojheni are being built in the middle of a settlement with the lines running over their houses, lands and religious and cultural sites. That will significantly affect or harm the communities’ livelihoods dependent on agriculture and tourism as well as the wider environment, and even cause insecurity to their health and lives, which will eventually displace them from their ancestral lands and settlement. Despite their repeated submission of complaints to the concerned authorities, including the NEA, and their continued engagement with the ADB and the NEA, their demands remain unaddressed.