Rapped by the Supreme Court, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has initiated the process to evict Leela Hotel from its land near the Mumbai airport after the hospitality company allegedly defaulted on making payments.

Hotel Leela Venture Ltd is running a five-star hotel on the plots of land leased to them by the Airports Authority of India near the Mumbai airport. The total area of plot allotted by AAI is 29,000 sq m. through different agreements.

Contract termination

“Since they had defaulted in payment and also for other violations in terms of the agreements executed between the Airports Authority of India and Hotel Leela Venture Ltd. and after prolonged litigations, the AAI Board decided to terminate the contract and accordingly, notices were issued for payment of dues and to hand over the possession of the property latest by October 31, 2016,” said a statement from AAI.

“ Since they had failed to hand over the passion of the property and pay the outstanding dues to Authority within the stipulated date, the eviction and recovery proceedings of dues have been commenced by the eviction officer and show cause notice has been issued for appearance on February 16 under the provisions of AA Act 1994,” it added.

Apex court rap

The move comes few days after the Supreme Court blasted the AAI and the Centre for not taking action for recovering the land even after the company failed to pay up.

The Supreme Court Bench on Monday had said that it was very unfortunate that the Centre was still making requests and had not gone ahead to effectively retrieve money or land back from the company.