Rs 1 lakh/day for upkeep, Suvarna Soudha is a 100% liability.

Belagavi: The big white elephant squatting on 6 acres of land abutting the Pune-Bengaluru NH-4 is slowly appearing to be a humongous mistake. It gobbles up over Rs 1 lakh per day, functions for just 10 days a year, and is clearly not earning its keep.

As a senior Congress minister said of the Suvarna Soudha, “It is the biggest slip-up in the history of Karnataka so far.” It’s not hard to guess who largely benefited from the construction of Suvarna Soudha here, built at a whopping cost of Rs 436 crore. The edifice, where the winter session of state legislature is currently on, makes a political statement, but is expensive to maintain and utterly inaccessible.

It has failed to meet the expectations of the people of North Karnataka —the main reason why it was originally conceived by then CM HD Kumaraswamy. Officials say the PWD department spends Rs 4 crore a year on maintenance alone. This roughly translates to over Rs 1lakh a day.

Efforts to move offices to Suvarna Soudha fail
According to PWD officials, the building’s daily maintenance cost is increasing by the year. The government has also spent about Rs 175crore to Rs 200crore to host the legislature sessions. This year, it is expected to spend around Rs 30 crore.

Inaugurated by former President Pranab Mukherjee on October 11, 2012, the Suvarna Soudha lacks the hustle and bustle that marks the original Vidhana Soudha in Bengaluru. After the debut session in Nov-Dec 2012, successive governments planned to make optimum use of Suvarna Vidhana Soudha by shifting some offices from Bengaluru, but nothing materialized. And it has remained merely a monument.

“No private party has come forward to take up tourism-related activities, though the government had offered to reduce maintenance cost,” said an official who oversees maintenance.

Law minister T B Jayachandra said repeated efforts to shift government departments or a public sector enterprise here, have met with resistance. “Over three years, I personally tried to get government departments to move to SVS and make it operational 365 days a year. They have resisted, citing personal or official reasons,” he said.

 

Hotel idea falls flat
The government proposed to build a legislators’ home and a five-star hotel that would be run by a reputed international hotel chain. The vantage point of the SVS, abutting NH-4, was the reason why the concept was floated.

The PWD had even prepared a line estimate of Rs 100 crore for constructing a 300-400 room hotel, spanning four floors. “However, the architects believed that constructing a hotel of that size in front of the SVS would aesthetically kill the Soudha, and its purpose of making a statement. So a location on the northern side, in a depression and away from the SVS, was suggested. But at this location, the vantage point for attracting customers was lost for private parties, and the few hoteliers who were interested backed out,” said the PWD official.