Shobha Rajput Elected President: District Mountaineering Association, Samba Makes Historic Strides in Women Empowerment
Samba, 22-02-2024 : Shobha Rajput,the pioneer sport climber of J&K and now running an educational institution at Samba has been unanimously elected as the President of District Mountaineering Association, Samba in an election meeting held at Press Club of Jammu. Manik Slathia, one of the finest mountaineers of J&K, was elected as General Secretary of the Association.
Whereas Tania Billawaria of Eurokids, Samba was unanimously elected as Vice President, Rohini Manhas, a teacher of The Shri Ram Universal School, Jakh and Sushil Singh, an avid trekker from Deon village were elected as Joint Secretary and Treasurer respectively of the district association.
Five members of the Executive body which included Minkle Verma, Rohini Saini of Samba, a sports teacher, Danish Slathia, Hitakshi Jamwal and Oshmi Bandral, a trekker were also unanimously elected.
It is pertinent to mention here that District Mountaineering Association, Samba has taken a great step towards women empowerment by electing seven women including the President, the Vice President and Joint Secretary in the ten member executive body and perhaps is the first sports Association in J&K to achieve this unique distinction.
Sanjeev Gupta, Chairman, The Shri Ram Universal School, Jakh and Everester Inspector Ram Singh Slathia were unanimously nominated by the newly elected body as Patron and Advisor respectively of the District Association.
Whereas Ram Khajuria, Senior Vice President of Mountaineering Association of J&K, was the Observer Rakesh Goswami, President of District Mountaineering Association, Jammu, was the Returning Officer for the elections.
Shobha Rajput who was known as the North Zone queen of sport climbing in her climbing days, while addressing the members expressed her gratitude for the honour they had bestowed on her and assured them that she would make all possible efforts to popularise adventure activities especially sport climbing in Samba District. She hoped that with the coming up of a standard climbing wall at M A Stadium, Jammu the Samba district would also produce north zone and national champions this year only. She, however, appealed to the Government to provide a standard climbing wall at Samba district where the local climbers could be trained in a professional way to make them high quality climbers capable of winning zonal and national competitions.
