Restaurants and bars in Delhi's five and four star hotels set to operate 24x7
The new norms allow restaurants and eating houses in 5-star and 4-star hotels, airport and railway station premises and at Inter-State Bus Terminals to operate on a 24X7 basis after paying necessary fee.
FollowNew licensing norms have been rolled out in Delhi, aimed at boosting the national capital's night economy, wherein all restaurants in 5-star and 4-star hotels in the city will now be allowed to operate round-the-clock.
The liberalised regulations are the outcome of several rounds of discussion on the proposals put forth by the high-powered committee, which was set up by Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena in November to examine the existing regulations and suggest ways of expediting the licensing processes.
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The new regulations would now be sent to the National Informatics Centre (NIC) for about necessary changes to be made in the new application undertaking. It will then be uploaded on the Union Home Ministry licensing portal.
The process is expected to be completed within the next three weeks. According to officials, by January 26, businesses in the national capital will be able to avail of this "new business-friendly, liberalised and progressive licensing regime".
The new norms allow restaurants and eating houses in 5-star and 4-star hotels, airport and railway station premises, and at Inter-State Bus Terminals to operate on a 24X7 basis after paying the necessary fee.
Restaurants and eating houses in three-star hotels will be allowed to operate till 2 am while the rest would need to shut down at 1 am.
Also, the earlier policy that provided for just one restaurant within 5-star and 4-star hotels to get a bar license has been done away with. This will enable such hotels to obtain separate liquor licenses for other restaurants within the premises on payment of the license fees.
Besides, the documentation for getting licenses has been reduced drastically, and there is no requirement for 28 documents to be uploaded. A total of 140 fields have been removed from the Common Application Form to make it user-friendly. In fact, the form length has been trimmed from 21 to just nine pages. Instead of multiple separate affidavits now, a Single Common Undertaking has been introduced.
All four agencies -- the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, Delhi Police, Delhi Fire Services and DPCC -- will now follow the coterminous financial year ending March 31 to issue and check the validity of licenses/NOCs. Doing away with the earlier system of granting licenses for one year, the period has been increased to three years for Delhi Police, Delhi Fire Service and MCD, and nine years for DPCC.
According to officials, an applicant would be able to get his license within a maximum of 49 days, with minimum human interface. To note, the average time for granting new licenses in Delhi was three years.
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