A promising future for events in Delhi- state invites organizers to collaborate

Delhi has many a times been considered an unfriendly city for events. Despite having some of the most experiential venues and state of the art infrastructural facilities, the issues of license clearance and openly evident corruption made organizing events in Delhi an excruciatingly painful experience for planners.

However with current AAP government delivering on its promise with approval of single window licensing process for events, hopes for smoothly organizing events in the city have been rekindled.

So what is the future of events in Delhi was the subject of an interesting panel discussion at EEMAX global 2015. The panelists for the session were Kapil Mishra, Minister of Tourism, Art and Culture, Delhi Government, Sanjay Kumar, IAS, Commissioner- Excise, Delhi Government, Vijay Nair, Director, OML and Rajesh Balpande, Founder, Book My show. The session was moderated by Rajeev Jain, Treasurer EEMA.

The session began with Kapil Mishra, Minister, sharing the perspective of the Delhi government on the subject. He said, “We promise ensuring zero corruption for the events industry in the city and the onus of delivering the same lies completely on us. I request all members of the fraternity to create dream events in the capital and we as part of government are ready to provide all the support needed for it.”

Highlighting his side of why OML had not organized an edition of its Intellectual porperty NH7 in Delhi? Vijay Nair said, “I have not had pleasant experiences in organizing events in Delhi. When we organize events here either we have to face corruption or succumb to unreasonable demands of free passes.”

Interestingly, revenues from event taxes amount to 73 billion pounds in London and 13 billion dollars in the US. However, revenues in Delhi for the same amounted to a meager 2 crore INR. “The prevalent corruption event organizers faced in Delhi forced them to shift to Noida or Gurgaon. However, things are about to change now with stricter administration and these figures are expected to grow now”-said, Sanjay Kumar.

During his address Kapil Mishra, Minsiter of Tourism, Art and Culture also made a promising request from the stakeholders of the events fraternity.  He said, “We have the pious river Yamuna in Delhi and we are making efforts to clean it in the next 36 months. However it is the responsibility of the event planners now to weave events around its backdrop. We are here to help build events in the capital and we will only consider ourselves and our government successful when the best event of the country is organized in Delhi.”