Petition for stay order against NMA dumped

KATHMANDU, AUG 04 -

The Supreme Court on Sunday threw out a petition for a stay order preventing the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) from issuing permits and collecting royalties for climbing Himalayan peaks.

Justices Kalyan Shrestha and Jagdish Sharma Poudel refused to issue a stay order ruling that the legal questions raised by the petitioner would be settled by the court while delivering a final verdict on the case.

Petitioner Deepak Bikram Mishra had argued that it was unconstitutional to grant permission to an NGO to collect royalties from the Himalayan peaks, and demanded that this privilege be revoked.

Advocate Mishra filed the writ at the Supreme Court challenging the NMA’s right to collect royalty in the first week of July. The Office of the Prime Minister, Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation and the Department of Tourism had been named as defendants in the writ.

“Following the ruling, we will continue our work of issuing climbing permits and collecting royalties,” said NMA President Ang Tshering Sherpa.

The NMA had expressed worry that if the peaks were removed from its control, hundreds of workers would be thrown out of their jobs.

According to him, Tourism Act 1978 has delegated power to the NMA to issue permits to mountaineering expeditions for specified Himalayan peaks.

While the government itself handles peaks in the high Himalaya ranging in altitude from 7,000 metres to 8,000 metres, the NMA has been allowed to manage

33 peaks known as trekking peaks. They range in height from 5,587 metres to 6,654 metres.

The NMA was established on November 1, 1973. It was authorized to collect royalties for 18 peaks following a cabinet decision on January 24, 1978. Satisfied with its performance, the government on September 20, 2002 allotted another 15 peaks to the NMA.

It had also put forward a few conditions like allocating 20 percent of the revenues for local development, 10 percent for environment protection and 5 percent for rescue purposes.

For the last 42 years, the NMA has been collecting climbing fees from mountaineering expeditions for the peaks which come to Rs70 million annually. The climbing fees have been set at $250 per foreign climber during the spring season, $125 during the autumn and $70 during the winter and summer.

Recently, the parliamentary International Relations and Labour Committee had summoned ministry officials and told them that the NMA could not collect government revenue, and that it should be done by the government itself.

Source: The Kathmandu Post