Interim order of High Court not to proceed with appointment of CEO of Tourism Board

Judge Sudarshan Raj Pandey's Ijalas issued an interim order on Monday to the opposition including the Office of the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, the Nepal Tourism Board and the CEO Selection Sub-Committee not to proceed with the board's CEO selection process immediately. After the tenure of the then CEO Dhananjay Regmi ended on 14 January 2080, the board with 64 employees was without a head. The board called for applications for the CEO on 24th Chait 080. The criteria for the CEO was to have a master's degree and at least 10 years of experience in the tourism sector.

11 8th and 9th level officers of the board filed a writ petition in Patan High Court on 9th Baisakh claiming that the board's CEO selection process was illegal. They claimed in the writ petition that the appointment of members of the sub-committee, Milan Devkota and Madan Kumar Acharya, which was formed by the meeting chaired by Tourism Secretary Deepak Kafle to select the CEO, was illegal. They said that it was an illegal ministerial decision that the Council of Ministers should appoint them. They claimed that the selection criteria for CEO was made contrary to the Board's Executive Chief Appointment Recommendation Procedure, 2080 and Nepal Tourism Board Act, 2052. They demanded in the writ to stop the game of making a certain person CEO on the basis of political proximity.

The court issuing an interim order on the said writ petition The members of the selection sub-committee, along with the office of the opposition Prime Minister and Council of Ministers, have called Devkota and Acharya for a discussion. "Until a decision is taken from the said discussion, do not/do not do any work related to the selection of the executive head of the board based on the procedure mentioned by the sub-committee on the selection of the executive head, which includes the opponents Milan Devkota and Madan Kumar Acharya," the interim order reads.

080 Tourism Board employees Hikmat Singh Air, Shraddha Shrestha, Santosh Vikram Thapa, Laxman Gautam and Naveen Pokharel applied for the CEO selection advertisement published by the board on 24th March 2018. Similarly, Vijay Nepal, Padam Van, Thakur Devkota, Ram Giri, Rajaram KC, Gyanin Rai, Dyaneshwar Mahato, Surya Bahadur Ghimire, Gyanendra Adhikari, Deepak Bastakoti, Chaksu Malla, Kamal Dodhri, Ramchandra Sedai applied for CEO. Similarly, 20 people including current CEO Dhananjay Regmi and former CEO Deepakraj Joshi had applied for the CEO competition on the board.

The three-member selection sub-committee comprising board members Devkota and Acharya along with director general of the tourism department Chakra Budha on Friday removed the names of 16 applicants from the final list of 4 applicants namely Kamal Dodhri, Chaksu Malla, Padam Bun and Gyanendra Adhikari as ineligible for the post of CEO. It was kept in the final list. That sub-committee has taken a presentation on how to solve the problem of joining the board with them on Monday. According to the procedure, this sub-committee should send the names of three persons to the board meeting chaired by Tourism Secretary Deepak Kafle. One of them should be appointed as CEO by the board of directors for four years.

The main source of income of the Tourism Board, an autonomous body established in 2053 with the aim of promoting Nepal's tourism potential around the world, is Rs 1,000 paid by foreigners returning from visiting Nepal at the Tribhuvan International Airport. The board has 64 employees including 6 directors, 21 managers, 32 officers, 3 messengers and 2 drivers. The chief executive post of the Tourism Board is the CEO for four years. The board of directors has 10 members, 5 from the tourism business and 5 from the government of Nepal.