Unease among illegal hotels, buildings owners inside walled city

Neeraj Bagga

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, May 30

It caused unease among hoteliers and proprietors of commercial buildings inside the walled city after the Punjab and Haryana High Court issued contempt of court notices to five officials, including high-ranking administrative officials of the state government, in the case of illegal commercial constructions around the Golden Temple.

Hoteliers in the walled city are uncertain of their future while hospitality players falling under the organised sector are upbeat that it would boost their occupancy. The proposed action by the authorities against unauthorised hotels may see a spurt in the business of approved and tax-paying hotels.

Amritsar Hotel and Restaurant Association president APS Chatha said unauthorised hotels that had not been paying any taxes were offering rooms at low rates while authorised hotels were being denied their share of business. He elaborated that unauthorised hotels and lodges were not paying taxes like VAT, service tax, luxury tax, income tax and other taxes because they were not registered with the government departments concerned.“In this scenario, tax-paying and duly registered hotels were at the receiving end because after paying so many taxes, they were not in a position to offer rooms at rates on a par with unauthorised hotels,” he said.Besides, non-registration of commercial units turned into hotels

and lodges makes them unanswerable to these authorities. He added that an unfair business environment was telling heavily on their investments.

On the other hand, it was a double loss to the government as it was losing revenue from unregistered hotels and facing criticism for letting unauthorised hospitality units operate, remarked association general secretary Piyush Kapoor.

It has been noticed that many hotels around the Golden temple have been named like the serais of the SGPC, which is a no-profit no-loss organisation.

Proprietors and administrators of authorised hotels believe that they will regain their legitimate business once the government takes action, said Kapoor. Seasoned players in the hospitality industry fear that the high number of unregistered hotels will financially hit the authorised ones. They claimed that most hotels and lodges running without valid documents did not have the provision to face any eventuality.

A majority of these hotels did not have fire-safety equipment to tackle any fire breakout. Besides, these were situated in congested residential areas.

To cash in on the record number of pilgrims and tourists visiting the Golden Temple, a number of hotels, lodges and guest houses have come up on arterial roads around the shrine.

Politicians and influential persons have raised a majority of these commercial structures, violating building bylaws, fire-safety norms, pollution checks, parking spaces and the Sarais Act, 1867.

Meanwhile, a section of society wished that these commercial units should be transformed into other useful commercial enterprises to save their owners from total financial loss.