NAGPUR: A requisition order from the collector Ashwin Mudgal on May 30 asking the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation to reserve all 22 rooms at its office located at Civil Lines for visiting VVIP and VIPs during the monsoon session has put it in a quandary. The monsoon session of the Vidhan Sabha is being held in the city from July 4 to 20.
The rooms located on the first and second floor of the
MTDC building near Tehsil office has family, standard, deluxe and VVIP rooms. The bookings for these are made online and are fully paid in advance. But, now, the MTDC has sent cancellation mails to those who had booked these rooms in March and April and have assured them of a full refund.
Sources at MTDC informed that after a meeting of all hoteliers, resort owners and accommodation providers held at collector’s office on Friday, the MTDC has been told to reserve its eight deluxe rooms and four VIP suites for the duration of the assembly. The family and standard rooms have been excluded for now.
Justifying the requisition order, Mudgal, citing Section 5 along with section 11 of Maharashtra Land Requisition Act, 1948, told TOI, “We require some buffer arrangements during the monsoon session to avoid any kind of inconvenience to visiting VVIPs. This accommodation has been reserved for five whips and four chief whips of various political parties who require both official and residential space during their stay.” He also added that the administration would be making a payment to MTDC as per the valuation provided by PWD.
Admitting that he had received many complaints from people who had booked rooms at the resort, and that the situation had caused considerable embarrassment to MTDC, principal secretary of tourism and CMD of MTDC, Vijay Kumar Gautam said, “Cancellations like this harm the credibility of a commercial outfit like ours as people loose trust. The requisition act is a powerful one and is to be exercised in extreme exigencies. The collector must be having reasons to do so. But we will ask him to exclude our facility from such requisitions in future.”
Gautam says that MTDC will be billing the administration as per the booking tariffs which are fixed.
Many of the bookings now cancelled were made by parents whose wards were participating in the State Senior Ranking Table Tennis tournament being held in the city from July 19. Dinesh Hulwale, who along with six others is coming from Mumbai, said, “We received a mail on Thursday informing that our bookings had been cancelled. MTDC had no answer when we called and asked them to make alternative arrangements for us.”
Hulwale and others had booked rooms from July 18 to 21 and are now struggling to find a place to stay.