India had earlier offered to measure the height of Mount Everest jointly with Nepal, following the massive earthquake in 2015, that rocked the Himalayan nation. But Nepal has decided to carry out the exercise on it’s own.
The 7.8 magnitude earthquake in April 2015, had devastated the Himalayan nation, killing more than 8,000 people and displacing lakhs. After the quake, the scientific community had raised doubts about the height of the peak.
The Survey of India, a 250-year-old institute under the DST, proposed re-measuring Mt Everest as an ‘Indo-Nepal Joint Scientific Exercise’ with Nepal’s survey department. India attended a meeting convened in Kathmandu, where surveyors and scientists from different countries including China were present.
Nepal will, however, seek help from India and China for getting crucial data for the exercise. India is being requested to provide the levelling data while China has been asked to provide the gravity data. The data will be crucial to determine the height of Mount Everest.