Development at Gelephu International Airport in Samtenling, Sarpang, will affect 552 landowners across roughly 1,400 acres. Bhutan’s major project is advancing on land tied to unresolved displacement and property claims. Authorities have offered replacement land, tokenization or monetary compensation. Residents have raised concerns about fragmented holdings, losing land across generations, and whether they can remain in Sarpang. The airport is moving toward its 2029 target.
Land, Compensation and Displacement
The wider Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC) is planned across a large area of southern Bhutan, home to Nepali-speaking communities, including thousands of families expelled in the early 1990s. In an October 5, 2026, article, The Diplomat’s TP Mishra and Ramesh Gautam examined how project development intersects with that history and with current residents’ questions about compensation and relocation.
Bhutan’s government began forcing Nepali-speaking people out after removing Nepali from schools in the south in February 1989 under the “one nation, one people” policy. Human Rights Watch reported that ethnic Nepalis viewed “Bhutanization” measures as attacks on their cultural identity, contributing to mass demonstrations. Nepali still isn’t taught in southern Bhutan’s schools.
In 1997, the United Nations’ refugee agency reported about 92,000 Bhutanese refugees in seven camps in Nepal, with another 15,000 outside the camps. By 2015, more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees had resettled in eight Western countries, the vast majority in the United States.
Chet Nath Timsina was 20 when he and his family were evicted from southern Bhutan after officials coerced them into signing a “voluntary migration form.” He resettled in New York in 2009. After watching part of Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay’s United Nations General Assembly address, he said: “I saw him just talk about GMC, which I feel is another way to disturb the living places of the Nepali-speaking population in Bhutan.”
Bhanu Adhikari, 76, now lives in Adelaide, Australia. He said he spent two years in prison after authorities accused him of violence against the government following protests in the early 1990s. While he was away, he said, officials forged documents to take his family’s seven acres of fertile land and other properties for 51,000 ngultrum, roughly $500. His mother-in-law, Beni Maya Rai, died in Adelaide in 2025, aged 91, still wishing to return to her ancestral land.
“If foreign investors are involved in the GMC project, we will try to seek legal counsel to hold them accountable and pursue compensation for the land the Bhutanese government looted from us,” Adhikari said.
Investment and National Rules
Tobgay urged foreign investors to support GMC at the United Nations General Assembly on September 22. “I stand before you today not as a prime minister, but as a salesman,” he said. The project is promoted as a combination of ecological preservation, Buddhist values, technology, finance and international investment, with promises of economic growth, environmental stewardship and human well-being.
The project would let Thimphu widen economic relationships while retaining longstanding ties with India, particularly in hydropower and trade. At an Indian government foreign policy panel in June, participants highlighted GMC’s goal of attracting international investment and the growing role of Indian private investment. The article described the project as part of Bhutan’s effort to expand its strategic autonomy in a volatile region.
The International Monetary Fund has identified fiscal and financial risks associated with GMC. Its independent tax regime could affect Bhutan’s national tax base. The legal relationship between GMC and the rest of the country also needs clarification on labor, goods and capital mobility. Those questions leave the project’s internal rules and their relationship to national rules among the issues still to be addressed.
Bhutan’s economy has long depended heavily on hydropower and tourism. That model generated significant revenue and helped preserve distinctive environmental and cultural policies, but it didn’t create enough private-sector jobs for a growing, educated population. The IMF reported youth unemployment at 17.8 percent in the third quarter of 2025 and identified outward emigration as a continuing structural concern. GMC is intended in part to create economic opportunities and attract investment that could encourage young Bhutanese to stay or return.
Claims and Calls for Answers
Land leveling, corporate partnership agreements and construction are under way in the project area. During an earlier airport expansion, 11 landowners appealed their replacement-land allocations, saying they weren’t satisfied with substitute plots. Authorities have also invited proposals for a 256-unit housing project intended mainly for relocated families.
Tilak Rai, chairperson of the Bhutanese Refugee Representative Repatriation Committee (BRRRC), spoke from the Beldangi refugee camp in Jhapa, Nepal, where close to 7,000 refugees still await a durable solution. He called GMC a continuation of past injustices and said authorities denied affected-area residents proper compensation and silenced them through fear of retribution. “The BRRRC appeals to the international community to prevent Bhutan from turning seized ancestral land into a high-tech façade designed to erase our history,” Rai said.
The article said transparent mechanisms would be needed to address property claims by people forced to leave. It also said investors should weigh the project’s historical and institutional context alongside industries, tax incentives and expected returns. Timsina said: “Watching Mr. Tobgay talk about building a future on the land I was evicted from felt like opening an old wound that never truly healed for me and my family.”