New Delhi: The budget hotel project of the Railway Ministry, which is in limbo for over two and a half years due to policy issues, may go ahead as differences between the Rail Land Development Authority and the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corp are said to be resolved.

Due to some policy issues, this project could not move ahead as it was expected to,” a top official of IRCTC told PTI.
“While inviting tenders, there were some issues raised by the Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA) due to which this project (Budget Hotel project) got delayed.” Railway Ministry’s executive director (Tourism and Catering) Ashok Kumar told PTI.
“However, these issues have been resolved and we expect that this project would progress soon,” he said, adding that besides, economic downturn impacted developers’ interest in the project, which targets setting up 100 budget hotels across the country.
The Railway Ministry in November 2006 had announced that it would set up 100 budget hotels across the country, for which bidding process was to be completed by December 2006.
Also, the Ministry invited tenders for setting up 30 hotels, but only four budget hotels had come up so far.
A top official of Zoom Developers, which had won bid for 19 budget hotels across the country, said, “We expect that concessional agreement with IRCTC would be signed by the end of this month.”
“If the agreement is signed by the time, the company would start construction of the hotels in July or August and construction work is likely to be completed in next 18-24 months,” he said.