Amid debates that there might have been a change in the height of Mt Everest due to various reasons, including 2015 earthquake, Nepal and China are likely to announce the revised height of the world’s highest peak during the upcoming visit of the Chinese defence minister to the Himalayan nation, media reports said on Thursday. 

China’s Defence Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe will visit Nepal on Sunday, November 29.

A meeting of Nepal’s Council of Ministers held on Wednesday authorised the Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation to announce the new height of Mt Everest, PTI reported quoting The Kathmandu Post.

After the cabinet meeting held on Wednesday, Minister for Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation Padma Kumari Aryal said, “As the measurement work is in the final stage, the government is preparing to officially declare the new height of Mt. Everest,”

“It is the first time that the government has measured the height of the tallest peak in the world by using its own resources and equipment,” she said.

The Nepal government aimed to measure the exact height of the mountain amid its height debates. The height of Mt Everest, measured by Survey of India in 1954, is 8,854, PTI reported quoting The Rising Nepal newspaper. 

Everest’s height was measured as 848.13 meters above sea level by Chinese surveyors in 1975, as per China’s official Xinhua news agency.

In 2005, a survey said the summit’s rock height is 8,844.43 meters and its ice-snow layer at 3.5 meters deep. The survey this year in May said that there was one meter of unknown material, probably a mixture of ice and gravel, between the rock head and the snow cap. 

The revised height will be announced on Sunday, MyRepublica said quoting sources. However, it is not clear whether the revised height will be announced during Wei’s Sunday visit, The Kathmandu Post reported. 

Earlier, officials from Nepal and China had reached a consensus to announce the official height of Mt. Everest which straddles the two countries, PTI reported.

While Nepal started measuring the height of the mountain in 2017, China did so last year after the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Nepal. The two countries have already accomplished the task of measurement of the height of Mt. Everest, the reports said.