As a New-Year gift to the hospitality industry in the National Capital, all restaurants and eating houses in five-star and four-star hotels, those within the airport, railway station and ISBT premises will be permitted to operate on a 24X7 basis, after the payment of a mandatory fee.

Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena in November had set up a high-power committee to ease and facilitate license requirements for restaurants and eateries and directed it to examine the existing regulations and suggest ways of expediting the licensing processes.

After the submission of the report by this committee, it took several rounds of meetings to finally concretise the liberalised regulations. The same will now be sent to National Informatics Centre (NIC) to bring about necessary changes in the new application undertaking and uploading the same on the MHA Licensing Portal.

“This is expected to be done in the next three weeks, and come January 26, entrepreneurs in the city will be able to avail of this new progressive, business-friendly and liberalized licensing regime in Delhi,” an official said.

In three-star hotels, restaurants will be allowed to operate till 2 am while in all other categories they will be able to operate till 1 am.

Additionally, in five- and four-star hotels, the ceiling of only one restaurant getting a bar license has been lifted.

This will enable the five- and four-star hotels to obtain separate liquor licenses for more than one restaurant or bar serving liquor within the hotel premises on payment of the license fee.

The number of documents required for getting licenses has been drastically reduced and 28 documents will no longer be required to be uploaded while applying.

Instead of the earlier system, where different agencies followed different calendars – financial year or calendar year, all four agencies – MCD, Delhi Police, Delhi Fire Services and DPCC – will now follow the coterminous financial year ending March 31 for the purpose of issuing and validity of licenses and NOCs.

In a common application form, 140 fields have been removed making it user-friendly and the 21-pages form has been reduced to just nine pages.

Instead of multiple separate affidavits now, a single common undertaking has been introduced.

In another major relief, instead of the earlier system of grant of licenses for one year, the period has been increased to three years for MCD, Delhi Police and Delhi Fire Service and nine years for DPCC.

In a major move, grant of licenses have been made time-bound, with a deemed approved clause being inserted, that will ensure that the license has been approved and granted if the concerned agency or official does not take any action on the application within the stipulated time frame.

An applicant will be able to get his license within a maximum of 49 days, with minimum human interface, instead of the earlier unlimited time frame that resulted in an applicant running from pillar to post and getting harassed.

The average time for the grant of new licenses was three years in Delhi up till now.