University hostels will get a facelift, thanks to Games

The state government, aware that there won’t be enough hotel rooms to accommodate visitors during the commonwealth Games, plans to put up some of them in refurbished university hostels.

Updated on: Jun 10, 2008, 01:05:02 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The state government, aware that there won’t be enough hotel rooms to accommodate visitors during the commonwealth Games, plans to put up some of them in refurbished university hostels.

This won’t be difficult as during the duration of the Games, universities in the capital would be closed with students enlisted for Games-related duties. The Tourism Ministry will help university authorities run these hostels as long as the Games are on.

The ministry on Monday said Delhi could face a shortage of about 6,000 rooms during the Games. The city would require 30,000 rooms to accommodate sportspersons and visiting people. Delhi has about 11,000 hotel rooms with provision for another 13,000 before the event kicks off.

Those without rooms, the ministry said, would be accommodated in hostels of Delhi University, the Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Milla Islamia. Under the proposal, the Centre would provide the money needed for refurbishing these hostels.

Sports Minister M.S. Gill has asked the ministry to discuss the plan with relevant ministries. “It would be a new gift to the students,” Gill said.

A committee on the Games, whose members include Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and Indian Olympic Association president Suresh Kalmadi, was told Akbar Hotel that houses the Ministry of External Affairs might be available for the Games. The MEA is expected to shift to its new headquarters by 2009.

In the face of complaints from government agencies that rising steel and cement prices were preventing them from completing hotel projects on time, the committee decided to set up a committee that would arrange for additional stock of steel and cement. The sports ministry, on its part, would take up the issue of rising prices with the finance ministry. The committee also asked the urban development ministry to develop uniform signages and street furniture at places hosting events and visitors.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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