Sahara Group will bid for
the Taj Mansingh hotel
in central Delhi if it is
put up for auction by the
property’s owner NDMC,
Subrata Roy, chairman of diversified
group, claimed. “We
are definitely after it, we are
working on it...If the hotel
property is auctioned, we will
go for it,” Roy said at his residence in Lucknow
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The
group’s interest in the hospitality
sector is well known
after a series of recent acquisitions
in the US and the UK,
including the Grosvenor
House and New York’s The
Plaza. The Taj Mahal hotel on
Mansingh Road in Delhi is
now operated by the Tata
Group’s hotel arm Indian
Hotels Company under a lease
agreement with the New
Delhi Municipal Corporation
(NDMC). The civic body is,
however, considering a plan
to auction the hotel after Tata’s
33-year lease, plus a year’s
extension, ends this year.
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“For a property like this,
we will be willing to offer a
good price,” Roy said.He did not disclose the
price that such a prime property
would fetch, preferring
to just say that a group of key
professionals been set up to
chalk out a plan that would
make the group India’s largest
hotel company with domestic
and international assets.
“ As much as 80pc of
these hotels would be in India,
of which a majority
would be greenfield,” he
added. Sahara now owns the
223-room Sahara Star hotel
that sits on 7.42 acres adjacent
to the Mumbai domestic
airport. It is no by means
certain whether it will get the
Taj Mansingh property considering
the complications
involved.
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