Lucknow: No vacancy in luxury hotels as UP government books 350 rooms for summit delegates

Anyone seeking accommodation in a luxury hotel in the city during the two-day UP Investors’ Summit may possibly be told politely that there is no vacancy as all the rooms have been booked for the VIPs and chief executive officers (CEOs).

The Uttar Pradesh government has reserved 350 rooms in a dozen luxury hotels for three days from February 21 to 23 for the stay of Union ministers, bureaucrats and important CEOs, all of whom are coming to participate in the summit, a tourism department official said. The 11 luxury hotels booked for the delegates include the Taj Vivanta, Renaissance, Hyatt Regency, Hilton, Piccadilly and Ramada, the official said. The department of industry will foot the bills for the same.

“Not only this, we have negotiated rates with the Lucknow Hotel Association at Rs 1100 per room for rest of the hotels where any delegate or his staff can stay on his own expense,” the official said. All the guest houses of the estate and other government departments have also been booked for the delegates.

300 VEHICLES HIRED

Estate department sources said 300 SUVs and cars, mainly Innova and Honda City, were hired from five private tour and travel agencies for three days. Besides, the estate department’s own 120 cars, mostly Ambassadors, will be pressed into service for picking up and dropping delegates from and at different places. “Vehicles will remain stationed outside hotels, guest houses and the venue,” sources said.

MAKE-SHIFT HOSPITAL

The health department is ready with a plan to swiftly deal with any emergency, an official said. Right from making a make-shift hospital right at the venue to reserving beds in all the government hospitals, it has left nothing to chance.

“We have set up a two-bed temporary hospital with all necessary units, including anesthesia and gynaecology, besides an advanced life support ambulance at the summit venue itself,” chief medical officer Narendra Agarwal said.

“Besides, we have reserved 10 beds each in the government hospitals in the city and nominated the Ram Manohar Lohiya as the referral hospital for the venue from February 20.”

He said 51 ambulances, 20 of them ALS (Advance Life Support) will remain stationed round the clock outside hotels where CEOs and other VIPs will stay. There will be a few at the summit venue too. Government doctors have been called from the districts in Kanpur and Faizabad divisions.

UNINTERRUPTED POWER

The UP Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL) is trying to ensure that the venue gets uninterrupted electricity, an official said. “We have one additional sources of supply from the Mantri Awas sub-station for the venue and set up a Ring Main Unit (RMU) that will ensure that if one source of power supply gets interrupted for any reason, another gets a activated automatically,” Lucknow Electricity Supply Administration (LESA) chief engineer Pradeep Kakkar said.

“Automatic generator sets will also remain stationed there for any emergency,” he said. He said engineers had been deployed at all the critical points of distribution and transmission to react quickly. The home department has said that it will disclose its security plan in a press conference on Monday, though it is understood to have chalked out an elaborate and a foolproof security mechanism for each and every point.