Cabinet gives nod to disinvestment of three ITDC hotels

The Cabinet today gave approval to disinvestment of three ITDC hotels at Bhopal, Bharatpur and Guwahati.

Announcing the cabinet decision, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that the Indian Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC) would offload its 50 per cent equity in Ashok Bhopal and Brahmaputra Ashok Guwahati in favour of the state governments of Madhya Pradesh and Assam, respectively. In case of Ashok Bharatpur, ITDC, which is managing the hotel, will hand over the management control to the Rajasthan government. The states, he added, will have the option to upgrade and operate the hotels by involving private companies or to utilise the properties as per their requirements.

The decision has been made keeping in view the dictum that running and managing hotels on professional lines is not the work of the government or its entities, an official spokesperson said in a Tweet. Jaitley also said that the Assam government may develop Ashok Brahmputra hotel at Guwahati as a guest house as there are many private hotels in the state capital.

ITDC is exiting hotels in tandom with the government’s disinvestment policy. Shares of ITDC closed at Rs 690.10 apiece on BSE, up 2.4%.