By Jaideep Sarin, IANS,
Chandigarh : When Mohali was selected to host a World Cup semifinal, this city may not have bargained for the hysteria it would generate. Ahead of the ‘match of the decade’ between India-Pakistan Wednesday, hotels are running out of rooms, tickets are being sold at sky high rates and residents have been told to accommodate guests and avoid certain roads for two days.
From prime ministers to corporate honchos, middle class businessmen to young cricket fanatics, everybody is going to, or at least wants to, watch the ‘mother of all clashes’. The city has virtually run out of rooms as well as match tickets to accommodate the high and the mighty, leave alone the lesser mortals.
With Rs.15,000 tickets of the prized terrace pavilion at the Punjab Cricket Association (PCA) Stadium, where the day-night match will be played Wednesday, going for over Rs.200,000 apiece in illegal auctions, black-markeeters are having a field day.
“A friend of mine sold three tickets for the match through a telephonic auction for Rs.5 lakh (Rs.500,000). The prices of tickets in the black market are crazy,” a leading businessman here, requesting anonymity, told IANS.
After the top political leaders, it is now the turn of celebrities and influential people who are lined up to arrive here Tuesday and Wednesday. The top names being mentioned are those of billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani, film star Shah Rukh Khan among others.
The result is that upscale hotels have run out of rooms.
The scarcity of rooms is such that the management of the Taj Hotel, where the Indian and Pakistani teams are staying, has got requests from city socialites to do up rooms in their homes so that some of the bigwigs can be accommodated there.
“Though we are taking proper care of both teams and all other guests who are staying with us, we have the limitation of only 149 rooms. We now have requests from people who want rooms in their homes to be done up so that some guests can be accommodated there,” Taj Hotel general manager Anil Malhotra told IANS.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be here to watch the match along with his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani.
The city police Tuesday issued an advisory for Chandigarh and Mohali residents to avoid certain roads, especially near the airport, Punjab Raj Bhawan, Taj Hotel and the PCA Stadium as these will be used by the visiting prime ministers and the cricket teams.
The PCA Stadium itself has been sealed with a five-level security ring extending up to 2-km from it.
The city has a total of about 1,400 hotel rooms while government and private guest houses account for 500-600 more. All the rooms have either been taken or blocked for March 29-30.
The Punjab government has even asked residents in Mohali, 10 km from here where the match will be played, to come forward to host visitors from Pakistan who are here to watch the high-intensity semifinal match.
“We are doing everything to make the whole experience of being in Chandigarh a memorable one for the teams, visiting dignitaries, cricket officials and others. We take pride in the fact that such a big event is taking place in Chandigarh,” Malhotra said.
Chandigarh, the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, was conceptualized in the early 1950s and planned by French architect Le Corbusier. The 114 square kilometre city has a population of over 1.1 million.