The Himachal Pradesh High Court has ordered the closure of 18 state-run hotels as they were ‘loss-making properties with poor occupancy’. This comes following the Himachal Pradesh High Court issued an order on Monday, allowing the sale of the state Bhavan in Delhi because Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s government failed to pay the electricity dues amounting to approximately Rs 150 crore.
On Tuesday eighteen loss-making hotels of the Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation with poor occupancy were ordered to be shut down by the high court. A single-judge bench of Justice Ajay Mohan Goel said that HPTDC properties should be shut by November 25 and directed that the managing director of the corporation would be personally responsible to ensure the enforcement of the order.
The properties were being closed as they are financially viable, the court said. It further said that public resources should not be wasted by the HPTDC in the upkeep of “these white elephants”. The occupancy in these hotels are “much more dismal” than what the court’s expectation, which demonstrates that the HPTDC has not been able to utilise its properties to earn profit, the judge said. The corporation handed over the occupancy figures for the last three years in 56 hotels currently run by it, in compliance with the last order passed by the court.
The court, in its order on Tuesday, said that the continuation of the functioning of these properties is nothing but a burden on the state exchequer. The bench has taken a judicial notice of the fact that there is a financial crunch in the state, which is reflected in the matters involving finances listed before the court, the order said.”
Passing a detailed order on September 17, 2024, the court expected that the respondents would come up with something cogent and concrete to augment the resources of the corporation but till the dictation of this order, not even a small pebble has been moved or turned in this direction by the corporation”, the order said.
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