HyderabadAugust 26, 2025 07:37 PM IST
First published on: Aug 26, 2025 at 07:37 PM IST
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After cancelling the previous YSRCP administration’s land allotment to a subsidiary of leading luxury hotel chain Oberoi Group, the Chandrababu Naidu-led Andhra Pradesh government has delicately extricated the deal and handed over land at an adjacent location for the hotel.
The CM, facing pushback from Hindu religious groups and alliance partners JanaSena Party (JSP) and BJP, had announced in March that the 20 acres allocated to Mumtaz Hotels in Alipiri would be cancelled. The order was finally issued on August 7. However, on August 22, the government decided to allot to the Group a parcel of land nearby of the same size. With this land swap, the government managed to retain the Oberoi Group’s Rs 250-crore investment in Tirupati.
To protect the government’s business-friendly image, TDP leaders started working the backchannels starting in the first week of May, with BJP and JSP leaders taken into confidence and requested to cooperate. Senior ministers and executives of the hotel chain held several rounds of meetings to renegotiate the deal. On May 7 and then on July 22, the TTD Trust Board passed resolutions approving the land swap.
“The recent decision has led to Oberoi Group retaining their name in their name in the agreement. The hotel that will come up in Tirupati will be in the name of the Oberoi Group to avoid any sort of confusion. Now, Mumtaz Hotels will not be in the picture,” a government source said.
However, this renegotiated deal has set off a row, with YSRCP leader and former TTD Chairman Bhumana Karunakar Reddy questioning it. “Instead of providing a genuine explanation to the land swap, the Chief Minister is saying that the TTD decided to prevent ‘impure activities’, while simultaneously justifying the transfer,” he said, questioning how land on the northern side of the Alipiri-Cherlopalli road on the foothills of Tirumala, where the Lord Venkateswara temple managed by the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) is located, could be considered sacred while the one on the southern side, where the hotel will be now built, is not.
Defending the decision, TTD Executive Officer J Syamala Rao said, “With the sole intention of preserving the sanctity of Tirumala and keeping in view the future needs for the convenience of the devotees, the TTD has decided to utilise the sacred land located on the northern side of the road. It is a known fact that several constructions have already taken place on the southern side of the Alipiri-Cherlopalli road, due to which the land available on the southern side of the road is allotted to the Tourism Department. The TTD has taken the sacred land on the northern side, which is close to the Tirumala hills.”
After the previous YSRCP government opened up Tirupati as a tourist destination, outlining its plan in the 2020-’25 tourism policy, Mumtaz Hotels submitted its proposal to build a hotel-cum-resort with villas, a bar, water sports facilities, and swimming pools. This did not sit well with Hindu outfits and priests of TTD-managed temples who expressed their discomfiture with not just the hotel’s name, but also objected on the ground that the hotel would serve non-vegetarian food and liquor. The main objection was that hotels and resorts in the area should not be touching the foothills of Tirumala,
While land allocated to Emaar Group (five acres) and Devlok Group (10 acres), too, for constructing hotels did not court a similar controversy, their allotments were also cancelled by the Telugu Desam Party (TDP)-led government.
The land allotment for Mumtaz Hotels had caused a lot of trouble for the YSRCP government and former CM Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy because it was misconstrued as a Muslim group getting land near the Tirumala foothills.
Among the notable opposers were Andhra Pradesh Sadhu Parishad president Srinivasananda Saraswati; Hindu Samithi president T Omkar, who filed PILs demanding the cancellation of the land allotment; and local BJP leader Bhanu Prakash Reddy. Reddy told The Indian Express that the Mumtaz Hotels resorts at the foothills would have violated the “sanctity and sacredness” of Tirumala. “The government took the right decision to shift the location of the hotel,” he said.
At a meeting on November 18, 2024, the newly appointed TTD Board passed a unanimous resolution saying the land should not have been allotted to the hotel group and should be handed back to the TTD. When Chandrababu Naidu visited Tirumala on March 21 this year for darshan of Lord Venkateswara, he promised to ensure “no unholy activities take place” near the Tirumala hills. The Tourism Department agreed to hand back the allocated land but requested that another plot across the road be allotted in return.