At their playground, Delhi elite plan exclusive hotel

Handed over on lease by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1951, the Delhi Golf Club occupies 179 acres. Given the Rs 14.4 lakh per sq yard market rate in neighbouring Lodhi Road and Golf Links, this property is worth a staggering Rs 125,452 crore.

The government values land at lower rates — last year, information commissioner M L Sharma recorded its official value at Rs 46,722 crore.
The decision to add a new complex has led bureaucrats in the ministry, as well as urban activists, to ask why the government isn’t raising revenue instead from a public asset.

Public records show the club pays the government just Rs 5.8 lakh per annum — not enough to even rent a two-bedroom apartment in the area. The club has over 3,000 members. In 2012, former urban development minister Kamal Nath extended the club’s lease for another 30 years — though it wasn’t due until 2020. He nominated 29 people for out-of-turn membership.

Both Kamal Nath and Indervir Singh Juneja, president of the club, did not respond to requests for comment. Membership is frozen at just over 3,000 — divided into 900 category ‘A’ members with the right to vote, 1,200 category ‘B’ members without voting rights, and new entrants, or ‘C’ category members, who may neither vote nor play on the main course. In addition, there are 200 positions for bureaucrats nominated by the government stationed in Delhi, called tenured members.

For all practical purposes, membership has become inherited property. Dependents of members get half of all memberships that open up by right, while the bureaucracy claims another 20 per cent. That leaves just three memberships open to the public — and the wait time is now up to 37 years. The wait could increase if proposals to make membership for grandchildren a right go through.