Paragliding school at Bir-Billing fails to take off

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Ravinder Sood

Palampur, April 15

A paragliding school built at a cost of Rs 8 crore by the HP State Tourism Department two years ago is waiting for its inauguration.

The facility could not be made operational as the department is yet to put in place rules to regulate paragliding schools.

Hundreds of paragliding enthusiasts from the country and abroad, who visit Bir-Billing every year, are facing inconvenience as not one training school is functional in the area at present.

Former CM Virbadhra Singh had laid the foundation stone of the paragliding school seven years ago. It was to be made functional within two years. Virbhadra’s successor Jai Ram Thakur during a visit to Bir-Billing in 2021 had announced an early start of classes in the paragliding school, but to no avail. Information gathered by The Tribune reveals that at present, there are no rules to regulate paragliding schools in the state. The Tourism Department has on several occasions announced framing of rules for regulating private paragliding schools, but no steps have been taken in this direction till date.

With the increase in number of aspirants keen on learning paragliding, several private schools have come up at Bir-Billing. A number of local pilots have been training paragliding enthusiasts.

Gurpreet Singh Dhindsa, a resident of Punjab and a renowned pilot, who used to run a private school at Bir for the past 20 years, admitted that his school was not registered with any authority in Himachal Pradesh since there was no provision to register such schools. He said whenever a mishap took place private schools were shut by the Tourism Department without assigning any reason or looking into the difficulties being faced by them.