HC agrees to hear plea on renewal of Hyatt's licence

The Delhi High Court today agreed to hear a plea challenging its single judge's order allegedly overlooking a decision of city police's licensing department to renew hotel Hyatt Regency's licence.
A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice R S Endlaw agreed to hear on March 19 the appeal filed on behalf of youth Gaurav Rishi who had suffered injuries after accidentally falling from the luxury hotel's sixth floor to the fourth.
The appeal has alleged that the licensing department of Delhi Police renewed the hotel's licence by "blatantly ignoring" its own status reports revealing several violations of licencing conditions by Hyatt.

The status reports had been filed before the court by Deputy Commissioner of Police, Licensing department, south district, on orders of the single judge, the petition has said and added that in such a situation, the renewal of the licence was arbitrary and illegal.
The petition has also alleged that police issued a show cause notice to the hotel after renewing its licence in order to cover up the agency's "own frivolous and unlawful conduct".
It also alleged that the single judge instead of taking cognisance of the "fraudulent conduct", directed police to decide the show cause notice, and by doing so "virtually condoned" the "frauds" committed by the agency.

Hyatt, during the brief hearing in court today, claimed it is not violating any of the licence conditions.

The single judge in his October 27, 2014 order had directed the South Delhi Municipal Corporation, fire department and the licensing authority to verify whether the deficiencies, as alleged in a petition filed on behalf of the youth as well as in the show cause notice issued to the hotel by Delhi police, exist.
The court had in its order also said that the outcome of the verification be communicated to the petitioner and had disposed of the petition filed by Gaurav's sister.

Gaurav had suffered serious injuries on the night of October 16, 2013 when he fell from the hotel's sixth floor and was in a coma for several months.