With the marriage season about to get underway, the city is witnessing chaotic scenes owing to a severe shortage of ‘legal’ banquet halls, with the DDA still to clear its first set of guidelines for banquet halls in the capital. At the DDA Board meeting held on Monday, members raised objections to the proposed guidelines, resulting in the decision on the same being deferred.

DDA's guidelines were shot down by non-officio members, which included councillors and MLAs, on the pretext that the proposal would transform into very little relief for the common man. Members vociferously opposed the DDA's plan of auctioning banquet halls in the commercial spaces based on these guidelines, since they felt that in case of auctions it would be the big builders who would manage to get all the contracts and would then provide services at these halls at five-star rates, making them inaccessible to the common man.

The guidelines were also criticized by members on the grounds that the restrictions did not address the traffic problems caused due to vehicles parked outside the venue. 

These guidelines will now be put up for consideration at the next Board meeting after taking into account the suggestions made by the members. The proposed rules, which would have formed the basis for running the 140 new halls, talked of restricting a banquet hall to an area of 800 sqm, with a maximum height of 15 metres and two cars per 100 sqm which would mean parking space for 16 cars in all. The guidelines also talk of 33% ground coverage. 

On its part the DDA, stung by the howls of protests against its proposed guidelines for banquet halls, has deferred the finalization of the guidelines and will be making large scale changes to the current proposal.

As part of these changes the DDA has already made a few announcements to the public like, keeping in mind the reality of Indian weddings, instead of the earlier suggestion of one banquet hall for a population of one lakh it would now allow for one hall for a population of 10,000.

Also the size of a hall will be increased from 800 square metres to 2,000 square metres, while the height will be increased from 15 metres (equivalent to four storeys) to 26 metres (eight storeys). Developers will also have to provide for 100 per cent parking in the basement as against the earlier guidelines that had proposed parking space for 16 cars only.