The Oberoi Sukhvilas resort, 30 km from the city, is listed as a major tourist attraction. It is owned by Sukhbir Badal and run by the Oberoi Group.
Chandigarh: On the New York Times’ annual list of 52 places to see in the world for 2018, there is just one Indian city – Chandigarh. And for that, it seems the city got a little help from Punjab’s former deputy chief minister, Sukhbir Singh Badal.
The brief note on Chandigarh, complete with a fetching picture of the ‘Open Hand’ monument, lists the city’s famous Capitol Complex, and Badal’s luxury resort, the Sukhvilas, as major tourist attractions.
“There’s news outside of the main town, too: The Oberoi Sukhvilas, Chandigarh, a luxury resort surrounded by more than 8,000 acres of forest, recently opened, and with its large spa, which offers an extensive range of wellness programs, it promises to be a destination in and of itself,” says the NYT note.
The property is owned by and named after Sukhbir, and is run by the Oberoi Group. It actually lies about 30 km away, in the green belt surrounding Chandigarh (district SAS Nagar, Punjab).
The NYT piece mistakenly mentions it as ‘Oberoi Sukhvilas Chandigarh’; its location is actually ‘New Chandigarh’, the name notified for this area which falls in neighbouring Punjab. The resort’s website makes no mistake about its location, saying it is ‘Oberoi Sukhvilas New Chandigarh’.
Sukhbir said the NYT endorsement was well-deserved. “All my hotels have been rated as among the best in the world,” he told ThePrint.
“The location of Sukhvilas is giving a fillip to tourism not just in Chandigarh but also Punjab. Remember how having the Punjab Cricket Association Stadium (in Mohali) put Punjab on the world cricket map?”
Controversial past
Sukhbir’s dream project was often in the news when it was being built while he was deputy CM of Punjab for 10 years in his father Parkash Singh Badal’s administration. Opposition politicians alleged he misused his position to get the clearances required to have a hotel in the middle of a forest, and also got a road built to the resort using government funds.
After the Congress came to power last year, there was fresh talk about probing how the project came up. Congress MLA Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa said a thorough probe was needed to find out how the project was cleared by the state forest department.
“How was a government road constructed leading to the resort? We were told the road was to extend beyond the resort, but that never happened. Also, why was the location of the toll plaza changed from near the resort to further off? These questions remain unanswered,” he said.
Asked about the Congress allegations, Sukhbhir said: “They can get any probe done. No rules were violated. In fact my project was cleared by the union ministry of environment during the Congress UPA regime.”
Other attractions
The rest of the NYT note hails the Capitol Complex, stating it is “a government compound designed by the renowned Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, (which) was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2016, and in 2017, the home of another notable architect, Pierre Jeanneret, became a museum dedicated to his contributions to the city.”
The Capitol Complex, which houses the Punjab and Haryana assemblies, the secretariats of the two states, and the Punjab and Haryana High Court, is in fact among the 17 sites of the architectural work of Le Corbusier spread across seven countries enshrined on UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites list.
Chandigarh has replaced Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal, as the only Indian city on the NYT list, for being a “green city and a mecca for architecture lovers”.