Tourism Minister Mahesh Sharma said that Government will soon privatise eight loss-making hotels run by India Tourism Development Corporation, ITDC. Talking to PTI, Mr Sharma said that government is planning to offload all the sick units. The Minister said, out of 16 hotels, eight are in very bad shape and the government proposes to disinvest it in the very first phase. He said, it is not wise to bear the burden of these loss-making units. Mr Sharma said, the ball has started rolling and the formal process should begin within two months.However, he ruled out the possibility of selling off 'The Ashok', the flagship property of ITDC in the national capital. The Tourism Minister said, Ashok will not be on the block as they are trying to revamp it and this year they will make it a profitable venture. The Ashok alone incurred a loss of about 13 crore rupees in 2014-15, while other ITDC hotels together ran up losses of about 15 crore rupees.Currently ITDC, a PSU under the Tourism Ministry, runs 16 hotels including three in Delhi and the rest in Jammu, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Puri, Patna, Bhopal, Bharatpur, Jaipur, Guwahati, Pondicherry, Mysore and Itanagar. The eight hotels which are likely to go under the hammer include those at Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Puri, Jammu, Guwahati, Ranchi, Pondicherry and Mysore, all of which are loss-making.The minister said whether the privatisation will be through joint venture or giving the operation and management to private players on a lease or any other modes was yet to be decided. During NDA's first stint in power between 1999 and 2004, the then Vajpayee government had divested 18 ITDC hotels, bringing down the number of state-run hotels from 34 to 16. Besides, the network of hotels, ITDC also runs 11 transport units, nine duty-free shops at airports and seaports.