Punjab’s Lord Diljit Rana has been conferred with Officer of the Most Excellent Order- OBE. Title of Office of British Empire has been conferred after 24 years by British Government.
“There were so many lockdowns and we are still in lockdown, so we have kept in touch with our customers, held on to our staff and looked after them as they are key people to the tourism industry,” says Lord Rana.
Lord Rana also acts as Honorary Counsel for India in Northern Ireland since 2003 .Since 2002 he also promoted Cultural and educational relations between India and Northern Ireland by organising Exchange programs with University of Ulster, and Queens University, Belfast and Various Cultural shows at Northern Ireland. He also promoted and led business delegations between NI and India and due to his efforts nearly 40 IT companies of Northern Ireland are successfully doing business in India .
business with a brand name Andras Hotels, which includes several hotels, to name a few Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, two Ibis hotels and Hampton by Hilton.The Indian-born hotelier has committed to Belfast’s hospitality industry, created thousands of jobs during the troubled times when many entrepreneurs left Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Back in his home state Punjab, he founded a Trust in 2001, and built an educational Complex Cordia Group of Educational Institutes at Sanghol (Ucha Pind), offering education, starting with a play school and Plus two school, institution of higher education offering graduate and post-graduate courses in arts, science, commerce, business administration and management , and the hospitality and tourism management., shall be training rural unemployed youth of four districts of Punjab in various trades, under scheme of Deen Dayal Upadhyay of Ministry of rural Development,to make them employable.
He has plans to establish Lord Rana International University, at Sanghol, pending the nod of Punjab Government.His commitment to transform rural Punjab through educational development , his Trust has been funding education to bring it within the reach of students from rural areas with an initial investment of Rs.50 crores for his educational project.
Lord Rana, the Chairman of Andras House Ltd, has been bestowed with the OBE title and honoured with listing in the New Year Honours list for services to business, and to the economy in Northern Ireland. On this occasion, he said, “I feel greatly honoured, it is totally unexpected. “We have been living in Belfast for the last 54 years and my commitment has always been to Northern Ireland and the city of Belfast. We have seen a lot of change over the years and hopefully we are going into better times. Brexit has made things difficult as we were doubtful as to how it would turn out but I think the agreement has finally given us some hope.”
