The iconic Janpath Hotel property would be transferred from the India Tourism Development Corporation ltd (ITDC) to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MHUA). And the Ministry of HUA will hand over the hotel to the National Building Construction Corporation (NBCC) for redevelopment. Thereafter, the hotel rooms would be used as Government offices thus saving the exchequer the amount incurred in taking private properties on rent for official purposes. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs had in May decided to hand over Janpath to Ministry of Urban Development, rechristened MHUA now.
Sources in the MHUA told The Pioneer that the hotel would be handed over to NBCC in the next few days as the booking of rooms has been stopped. The Ministry has already given the consultancy work to NBCC. It also asked to prepare a blueprint of redevelopment.
The 150-room Janpath hotel (130 twin rooms; one Maharaja suite and 19 single suites ) in lutyens' Delhi has been a major landmark in the Capital but despite its dream location, the hotel failed to become a hot destination. "Presently, 100 rooms are closed and unfit for accommodation," said the sources. The hotel is spread over four acres of land in the prime location of Connaught Place.
The building of Janpath hotel has to undergo major rehabilitation work since the building structure of hotel has been found to be unserviceable, in distressed condition and deficit in the context of seismic requirements. The Centre has incurred an expense of Rs 27 crore as rent on MPs 'stay in the five-star Hotel Ashok during 2015-16.
At present, most of the lok Sabha members live in the MP flats in North Avenue and South Avenue, close to the Rashtrapati Bhavan, and also in Narmada and Kaveri Blocks.
In the absence of sufficient accommodation, newly-elected MPs are often housed in Janpath and Ashok hotel. Due to the shortage of accommodation, many MPs had to stay in hotels during Parliament sessions leading to huge expenditures.
The Centre has initiated the process of disinvestment of hotels/properties of the ITDC.
The decision on disinvestment has been made, keeping in view that running and managing hotels on professional lines is not the work of the Government or its entities. In the first stage of the disinvestment process, it was decided to disinvest three hotels, viz Hotel lake View Ashok, Bhopal, Hotel Brahmaputra Ashok, Guwahati and Hotel Bharatpur Ashok. Hotel Janpath, New Delhi is next in the list.