Pathibhara / Mukkumlung Cable Car & Nepal's Ropeway Disputes

Pathibhara Devi is a Hindu shrine at about 3,794 metres (12,448 feet) on a ridge in Taplejung district, in Nepal's far eastern Koshi Province. It draws roughly 300,000 pilgrims a year, most of whom currently make a strenuous high-altitude trek to reach it. The same landscape is known to the Indigenous Yakthung (Limbu) people as Mukkumlung, a living sacred site rather than a temple building, which is why the project is referred to by two names in Nepali and international coverage.

The proposed gondola line runs about 2.75 kilometres from a lower station at Kaflepati to an upper station near the temple, rising roughly 700 metres in elevation. Publicly reported plans describe passenger gondolas plus cargo carriers and a ride of about ten minutes, replacing the multi-hour walk. The developer is Pathibhara Devi Darshan Cable Car Pvt. Ltd., part of the IME Group conglomerate led by businessman Chandra Prasad Dhakal, with an estimated cost around NPR 3 billion (about US$22 million).

Supporters, including the company and successive governments that labelled it a project of national importance, argue the line will boost religious tourism, create jobs (the company has promised local hiring), and make the shrine accessible to elderly and disabled pilgrims. Opponents counter that the economic case masks damage to a sacred forest, to biodiversity and to the rights of the Limbu community who live around the site.

For the Yakthung, Mukkumlung is not a place that houses a deity; the mountain and its forest are themselves the deity, associated in Limbu tradition with the goddess Yuma Sammang. Because the Yakthung do not build temples and instead treat forests, rivers and hills as living homes of the divine, clearing trees for a cable car is experienced as an assault on the site's spiritual power, not merely an environmental cost. This worldview is central to why the dispute cannot be resolved simply by adding compensation or relocating a tower.

Community organisations such as the Mukkumlung Protection and Struggle Committee and a broad 'No Cable Car' movement argue the project was approved without their free, prior and informed consent (FPIC). They invoke protections under Nepal's Constitution for the customary practices of Indigenous nationalities, alongside international instruments Nepal has accepted, notably International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

The campaign has used road blockades, street theatre, art and social-media advocacy, and in early February 2025 a protest shut transport across nine eastern districts. Tensions turned violent on 25 January 2025, when clashes between police and demonstrators left injuries; later reporting also described rubber-bullet fire and gunshot injuries among community members. Rights groups and some federal lawmakers publicly questioned whether 'development' should involve baton charges and firing on protesters.

A core technical objection concerns how the project was environmentally screened. The company proceeded on the basis of an Initial Environmental Examination (IEE) rather than a full Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Critics and reporting note that Nepal's rules require a full EIA for projects clearing more than five hectares of forest, and the cable-car alignment is documented as needing about 6.22 hectares of community and government forest, with roughly 4.97 hectares allocated for construction.

The scale of tree loss is contested. The IEE summary referenced around 112 trees, while its own detailed annexes listed more than 10,000 additional seedlings, saplings and pole-sized trees for removal; campaigners such as the Mukkumlung Protection and Struggle Committee have alleged the real figure runs to tens of thousands once clearance began in 2025. Reviewers also flagged that the assessment documented only a handful of the area's many recorded plant species and omitted legally protected trees such as the Himalayan yew (Taxus wallichiana).

The site sits in a biodiversity-rich belt of far-eastern Nepal near the Kanchenjunga landscape, home to species such as the red panda and Himalayan musk deer. Conservationists warn that forest fragmentation on a sacred ridge sets a precedent for similar projects elsewhere, which is why the Pathibhara case has become a reference point in the national argument over infrastructure in ecologically sensitive areas.

The legal fight reached Nepal's Supreme Court after residents petitioned to stop the project. Following a writ petition filed by Yam Bahadur Limbu and others, which named Pathibhara Devi Darshan Cable Car Pvt. Ltd. and 13 other respondents, a bench led by Justice Sharanga (Saranga) Subedi issued a short-term interim order on 30 March 2025 (Chaitra 2081 BS) directing that construction remain halted until further hearing.

That pause did not hold. After hearing both sides, on 14 May 2025 a joint bench of Justices Nahkul Subedi and Abdul Aziz Musalman decided not to extend the interim order, effectively clearing the way for construction to resume. Petitioners' lawyers acknowledged the ruling was a major setback, while the company welcomed it and renewed calls for dialogue with protesters. Opponents announced that protests would resume.

The Pathibhara stay must also be read against a broader constitutional ruling. On 16 January 2024 the Supreme Court's Constitutional Bench struck down legal amendments that had opened protected areas to infrastructure, declaring the amended provisions unconstitutional and void. That judgment, plus other pending petitions, is why lawyers argue later government moves to fast-track cable cars in protected areas sit on shaky legal ground.

The dispute widened into an international accountability process because of a World Bank Group link. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank's private-sector arm, had provided advisory support connected to the IME Group's business rather than direct project finance for the cable car; IFC publicly disclosed the advisory relationship in July 2024, and the advisory engagement closed around August 2024.

In August 2025, Yakthung (Limbu) representatives filed a complaint with the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO), the independent accountability mechanism for the IFC. The complaint alleges failures around Indigenous peoples' rights, free, prior and informed consent, and environmental and social safeguards under the IFC's Performance Standards. The CAO formally registered the complaint on 12 December 2025, moving it into an assessment phase that can lead either to a dispute-resolution (mediation) process or to a full compliance investigation.

For the community, the CAO route matters because it applies international safeguard standards that Nepali courts do not directly enforce, and it puts the reputational spotlight on the World Bank Group's involvement. For the company and government, it adds another layer of scrutiny to a project they consider legally cleared domestically. As of early 2026 the CAO process was ongoing and no final compliance findings had been published.

Pathibhara is the flashpoint in a wider policy battle over whether ropeways and cable cars should be allowed inside Nepal's national parks, conservation areas and wildlife reserves. Under existing protected-area law, ropeways carrying cable cars have not generally been permitted in such areas, and courts have previously blocked executive shortcuts: a 2020 ministerial order opening protected areas to ropeways and hydropower was annulled by the courts in 2021.

Despite this, the Ministry of Forests and Environment has worked on draft rules that would permit ropeways in protected areas under conditions, for example where they serve religious or tourist sites, where no viable alternative transport exists, or where a cable car is judged less damaging than a road. Reported drafts require base and end stations to sit outside park boundaries with only minimal structures inside, and set annual fees scaled to line length (indicatively in the low millions of rupees per year). Conservationists warn such rules could normalise construction in areas meant to be strictly protected.

The policy fight sharpened in 2025. Reporting and documents indicate the KP Sharma Oli administration granted national-priority status to a cluster of about six commercial cable-car projects, including Pathibhara and the Annapurna Sikles line in the Annapurna Conservation Area, easing forest and land use. A decision reportedly taken on 25 August 2025 and gazetted on 22 September 2025 was condemned by environmental lawyers as illegal and in defiance of the Supreme Court's 2024 ruling and pending cases, especially as it came around the time the Oli government was ousted amid the 'Gen Z' protests.

The developers' case rests on access, jobs and religious tourism: replacing a hard trek with a ten-minute ride, generating hundreds of jobs with local-hiring commitments, and drawing more pilgrims and visitors to a remote district. Governments backing the project have framed it as advancing regional development and national tourism goals, and the company has repeatedly offered talks with protesters.

The opposition's case rests on rights, consent and ecology: that a sacred Indigenous landscape is being cleared without FPIC, that a weaker IEE was used where a full EIA was legally required, that biodiversity in a sensitive Himalayan belt is at risk, and that the state met protests with force. Critics also argue the economic benefits flow mainly to investors rather than the Limbu communities who bear the cultural and environmental cost.

As of mid-2026 the picture is unresolved: domestic courts had allowed construction to proceed by not extending the stay, but the underlying rights questions, the CAO compliance process, and legal challenges to the protected-area fast-tracking remained live. The Pathibhara / Mukkumlung dispute has become the defining test case for how Nepal balances infrastructure and pilgrimage tourism against Indigenous rights and conservation law.