Dharmaraj Panthi elected as TAAN Gandaki president

POKHARA, Dec 20: Dharmaraj Panthi has been elected as the president of Trekking Agencies Association of Nepal (TAAN) Gandaki, the umbrella organization of trekking businessmen. The 29th annual general meeting and 17th session of TAAN has elected a new working committee for the next two years under the chairmanship of Panthi.

Panthi was earlier the first vice president. Krishna Prasad Acharya has been elected as the first vice president of the new working committee, Divas Lamichhane as the second vice president, Tirtharaj Subedi as the secretary, Mohan Prasad Subedi as the treasurer and Gopalkrishna Sangraula as the joint secretary. Similarly, Deepak Prasad Sapkota, Vishwaraj Adhikari, Madhab Prasad Khanal, Prakash Paudel, Bhupendra Kumar Lama and Suraj Gurung have been selected as members of the working committee.

There are 165 businessmen affiliated to TAAN Gandaki, the umbrella organization of padayatra businessmen. In the hiking sector, this organization has been doing research, research and identification along with promotional work. Since most of the current hiking routes have been displaced due to motorways recently, TAAN has been identifying and studying new hiking routes.

President Panthi, said that due to the corona virus infection an important part of the tourism sector has been affected more, so he will try to return it to the previous state by doing promotional activities in the coming days. He said that TAAN will work to find an alternative to the now displaced trekking routes. "Some new trekking routes will have to be identified and some old trekking routes should be protected," he said.