India's flagship automobile show, Auto Expo, which until now had been held every two years at the Pragati Maidan, New Delhi will not be held at its traditional venue in its next edition. The next Auto Expo, scheduled from February 6 to February 12, 2014, will be held at Greater Noida, located not far from the national capital. The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) on Monday, December 10, 2012, said that the venue and the timing of the auto show to be held in the country in 2014 was changed so that it does not clash with the Detroit Auto Show and the traditional venue, Pragati Maidan was unavailable.
SIAM Director General Vishnu Mathur, talking to reporters in New Delhi on the change of the venue and the timing of the auto expo said, "In the next Auto Expo, which will be held from February 6-12, we will be showing only vehicles and accessories at the India Expo Centre and Mart at Greater Noida." Answering to a question on what necessitated the change, Mathur said, "Lot of global CEOs who wanted to be here have said to us that they could not because of their engagement with the Detroit Auto Show. So we decided to shift our Auto Expo to February". Further elaborating on why the event moved out from Pragati Maidan, he said, "In February 2014, it is not available and hence we had to move to Greater Noida". He also said that moving the Auto Expo to Greater Noida, which is quite far from the main city, wouldn't be a big problem as "we are hoping that only the serious visitors will now come".
SIAM Deputy Director General Sugato Sen said that the Auto Expo to be held in 2014 at Greater Noida, so far as exhibition space is concerned, will be much bigger. Sen said, "We will have 50,000 square metres of occupied space by exhibitors as compared to less than 40,000 square metre that we had this year's Auto Expo." He further added that SIAM will be organising a bus and utility vehicles show between February 15 and February 18, 2013, which would act as a trial run ahead of the 2014 expo.
As reported by PTI at the end of Auto Expo 2012, its organisers, which include Automotive Component Manufacturers Association (ACMA), SIAM and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) were thinking to move the next edition of the biennial auto show out of Pragati Maidan. They wanted to take the auto expo to a more spacious 'world-class' location so that the Delhi Auto Expo can be the world's largest.
The 2012 Auto Expo had been an issue of criticism over mismanagement and crowd control as the entry of visitors was restricted over security and infrastructure issues. The week-long auto expo had received tremendous response from people and a total of 7,00,000 people visited during this period.
