They have got only two complaints against us and both of them are from two leading hoteliers of the city,' Gulshan Lal Bhatia, one of the alleged violators, told IANS.

'I have the copy of guidelines with me but it is nowhere mentioned how much rent we can charge and how many rooms we can give on rent,' he added. 'We have not violated anything. Instead, we have spent lakhs of rupees on renovating our houses to meet the demands of foreign tourists.'

Bhatia, who has opted out of the B&B scheme, said: 'I am sure that nobody is going to apply afresh in this scheme if the administration does not change its attitude.'

Gaurav Dhir, an advocate at the Punjab and Haryana High Court, told IANS: 'Members registered under this scheme are from respectable families and nobody wants unnecessary harassment. So we have voluntarily opted out of this scheme.

'It was quite embarrassing for us that without any prior notice officials inspected all the 25 houses in a single day, submitted their report in the evening and following it they are planning to slap a fine on us,' he said.

'We are responsible citizens, if they had any problem they should first communicate with us and we would have ourselves set everything right. But why are they behaving with us like we are hard-core criminals?'

Another landlord who has opted out of the B&B scheme said on condition of anonymity: 'We have prepared a list of more than 500 violations committed by Chandigarh hotels, but nobody is paying heed towards it. They are focussing all their attention to close this scheme of the government of India that is aimed at facilitating tourism.'

(Alkesh Sharma can be contacted at alkesh.s@ians.in)