Sewara Hospitality, under the scanner for running a ‘boutique hotel’ at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA) in the prime location of central Delhi at very high tariffs, has said it has not earned any financial benefit, since the property is not operational yet.
Sewara has made this point in its reply to a showcause notice sent by IGNCA, an autonomous institution under the Ministry of Culture, for violating a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between the two parties a year ago, according to a senior IGNCA official. A Sewara spokesperson had told this newspaper on Saturday it had not breached the MoU.
IGNCA had sent the show-cause notice on September 1 following reports that Sewara was operating a hotel, instead of a guest house, and charging tariffs much higher than what was agreed upon in the MoU.
It also questioned the company’s intentions of naming the property ‘Indravan’, without any consultation and putting it up on its website as a hotel. To this, Sewara has said it was part of its pre-marketing strategy to gauge the environment. The property is not operational and hence there is no question of violation, it said.
The guest house is the first of the eight buildings that IGNCA wants to develop in its premises, while the others include a conference and a concert hall. Sewara is owned by Aresko Estates, which is one of the eight bidders for the IGNCA guest house. The MoU signed between Sewara and IGNCA in July 2010 refers only to the IGNCA guest house. According to the MoU, Sewara Hospitality was supposed to get all the regulatory permits within 30 days of signing the agreement. The project is already running late by a year with some of the permissions still to come. IGNCA is examining Sewara’s reply and is likely to decide its future course of action soon.
Before opening the tender, IGNCA had approached the Indian Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC), Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation and the India Habitat Centre (IHC) for a possible agreement to run a guest house. “Efforts were being made to evolve a working model of running the guest house with IHC,” an IGNCA official said.
The deal with IHC could not be struck because it wanted to make it a ‘happening place’, which contradicted IGNCA’s mandate of strictly promoting research work for the cause of art and culture. ITDC’s proposal also could not be considered, as it put the onus of bearing the cost of furnishing, wages and maintenance on IGNCA. The official said ITDC’s proposal defeated the idea of revenue generation that IGNCA was looking for.