the goan I network
PANAJI
Operations at the Portuguese-era Mandovi Hotel, Goa’s first hotel of its stature, have been severely affected apparently due to internal dissensions within the prominent Quenim family which owns it.
The venue for decades of almost every historic political confabulation in the State, the Mandovi hotel overlooking the picturesque river of the same name, has been one of the most majestic icons of the capital city and the State.
Prashant Quenim, one of the co-owners of the hotel meanwhile told The Goan when contacted that it is not true that operations have been shut down.
“These are malicious rumours being spread by some vested interests,” Prashant Quenim, whose father the late Purxotoma Ramnath Quenim, had been Member of Parliament representing Goa in Lisbon, said when his comment was sought on the state of affairs in his establishment.
Prashant’s cousin, Babu Quenim, also a co-owner of the hotel is indisposed and was not available for comment. The latter’s son Anish, claimed he was not aware of the day-to-day management affairs but admitted that the “situation is not good”.
“The family is sitting across the table and working hard to resolve issues,” Anish told The Goan. He said, several members of the family are in confabulations to work out solutions.
Built in the 1950s prior to the Liberation of Goa, the Hotel Mandovi has been part of the Goan consciousness and houses the State’s first elevator (lift). The call buttons indicating the five floors in the interior of the elevator, maintained in its original form by the hotel to date, are still worded in Portuguese.
It was also the venue chosen by political leaders to conduct their behind-the-scene, closed door confabulations until recently. Top Indian leaders, including former prime ministers Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi and Atal Behari Vajpayee have been hosted by the hotel on most of their visits to the State.
Until recently, the hotel was also the venue where several governments were toppled and new ones stitched together, particularly in the 1990s and 2000s decades of topsy-turvy politics of Goa.
The current ruling party - the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - had made it the main venue of the first National Executive it held in Goa way back in 1995 after the saffron outfit made its debut in the Goa legislative assembly a few months earlier with the election of the late Manohar Parrikar, current Union AYUSH Minister, Shripad Naik, current Opposition Leader Digambar Kamat and Narahari Haldankar.
