NEW DELHI: One of the oldest and earliest cinemas that had come into existence in 1930s — Novelty — in the Walled City has been pulled down to make way for the commercial-cum-parking complex.
Municipal officials and top functionaries of deliberative wings of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation, which owns the property, on Tuesday said that they were not aware of the development.
However, according to the sources, the structure was demolished about two months ago just before the lockdown was clamped in the national capital. The civic body has been struggling to redevelop the property into financially viable project since 2000 when it took over the premises from Vijay Narain Seth after the lease had expired.
Initially, the municipal corporation wanted to revamp it as cinema-cum-commercial complex with the help a corporate giant.After trifurcation of the erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) in 2012, Novelty cinema building was transferred to NMC, which had proposed to convert into a spice market. However, both plans couldn’t take off.
A senior official, privy to the matter, said that a proposal to build a shopping complex cum parking is ready and the corporation would start working on it once the situation is normalised after the lockdown.
“We haven’t done anything commercially yet. We have just levelled the old building to the ground as homeless and drug-addicts would enter the premises and stay. The remunerative project cell (RP Cell) will soon begin a plan to exploit the land commercially,” said the official.
Novelty was started as a theatre, which was earlier called Elphinstone. The name was changed when one of the wealthiest city residents Jagat Narain Seth acquired it in 1930-40s. He also owned two more movie halls in old Delhi — Jagat near Jama Masjid and Ritz, at Kashmere Gate.
This is the third cinema in the Walled city area, which has been razed. One of the popular halls — Jubliee near Chandni Chowk was demolished in 1990s and New Amar was knocked down to pave way for Chawri Bazaar Metro Station. At one point of the old Delhi area had 12 cinemas however at present only four are operational—Delite, Abhishek, Moti and Ritz.
Chairman, standing committee of NMC, Jai Prakash said that a commercially viable project at the site would help the cash-strapped civic agency to strengthen its financial position.