A parliamentary committee has found that progress on the Sunkoshi Marin Diversion Multipurpose Project—one of Nepal’s national pride projects—has been far from satisfactory, despite achieving tunnel breakthrough more than a year ago.

According to the state-owned national news agency RSS, the Infrastructure Development Committee of the House of Representatives concluded in its meeting on Wednesday that the project has made negligible headway, raising serious concerns about delays in implementation. Citing the committee, RSS reported that the overall progress stands at just 1 percent, even though the project aims to be completed by October 2027.

“The committee has decided to conduct a detailed review of the project documents, as current progress reports are disappointing,” RSS quoted Committee Chair Deepak Bahadur Singh as saying. “We have also resolved to summon the Minister for Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation for clarification and to obtain additional project documentation.”

The committee also directed the government to avoid delays in appointing leadership for large-scale infrastructure projects. It noted that the Sunkoshi Marin project remained without a project chief for nine months, which further stalled progress.

Read: Sunkoshi-Marin Diversion Project Achieves Breakthrough of Tunnel

The dam construction contract has been awarded to a joint venture between India’s Patel Engineering and Nepal’s Raman Construction.

The project's total cost is estimated at Rs 49.42 billion. Once complete, it will divert around 67 cusecs of water from the Sunkoshi River—at the border of Sindhuli and Ramechhap—to the Marin River in Kamalamai Municipality-2 of Sindhuli. The diverted water will irrigate approximately 122,000 hectares of farmland across five districts in the Mid-Terai—Dhanusha, Mahottari, Sarlahi, Rautahat, and Bara—and will generate 31.07 megawatts of electricity.

The 13.3-kilometre tunnel, with a diameter of 5.5 metres, was constructed using an automatic tunnel boring machine (TBM) supplied by the China Overseas Engineering Group Company (COVEC). The TBM achieved a breakthrough in May 2024—one year ahead of schedule—following a 19-month drilling period that began in October 2022.

Despite this milestone, the overall project remains behind schedule due to administrative lapses.

Once completed, the project is expected to provide year-round irrigation to one of the country’s most important grain-producing regions and bring a transformative change to agricultural productivity in the area.