The Permanence of Change

VISITORS TO THE NORTH AND South Blocks that sit face-to-face atop Raisina Hill and house the Union ministries of home, defence, finance and external affairs dur­ing the winter months are often struck by the ubiquitous presence of room heaters in the cor­ridors of offices within the massive sandstone masonry. Sitting on benches outside the offices are support staff—who carry files, fetch refreshments and do odd jobs—with the heaters in close proximity. Even official-issue woollen clothing is not enough to keep the cold at bay as the corridors are open and exposed to the elements in the form of wintry winds. The structure of the North and South Blocks, with colonnades and central courtyards exposed to the skies, is such that insulation is a mirage. The interiors of the high-ceilinged offices are more comfortable but even here secretarial assistants are packed behind desks and partitions. In Delhi’s searing summers, air coolers replace heaters in the corridors, droning on in the afternoons as the moist drafts they generate struggle to counter hot and dry air.

New Delhi’s official buildings have been crying out for redevel­opment for decades, with layer upon layer of ad-hoc construction and renovation offering temporary solutions that only worsen the problem of overuse and congestion in the longer term. The North and South Blocks, like offices housed in Shastri Bhawan or nearby ones in Krishi Bhawan and Shram Shakti Bhawan, sport miles of exposed wiring despite panelling intended to conceal the cables. Their design makes central air conditioning a challenge, resulting in outward-facing windows and façades pockmarked with hun­dreds of air-conditioning units. Parking space at most of these build­ings, always a struggle, is further constricted by used and broken furniture dumped in the open. The cheek-by-jowl parking means officials in some complexes are required to display their mobile numbers on windshields in case their vehicles cause obstruction and need to be moved. Over decades, successive occupants of min­isterial offices have changed the design and furnishings of their rooms in attempts to make them look plush and modern. Some tried to clean up adjoining corridors and create a neater feel. The best of efforts could not get rid of smelly toilets and plaster patches that seemed, in some measure, to reflect stop-start governance. Al­though there is no clear symmetry or pattern in the design of the various ‘bhawans’, the architecture has the heavy and dull look of Soviet-style buildings with distinctly uninviting exteriors. There was an ideological underpinning as most of the buildings came up in the 1960s and 1970s, coinciding with the dominance of socialist thought in the outlook of India’s political and cultural elite. This was no surprise as the promotion of culture through tightly con­trolled official patronage was very much a political project.

Not far from the ministerial bhawans and Raisina Hill lies the old Parliament House that came into being in 1927. Its regal appear­ance and a perfect harmony between its circular perimeter and the tall columns that frame the wide corridor running around its first level are intended to overawe. Though not easily visible from either the Parliament Street or the Vijay Chowk approach, the Parliament building reflects the pomp of the Indian state and legislature and a rightful inheritance from the British Raj. It was completely fitting that the transfer of power should have happened in the impres­sive Central Hall as also the adoption of the Constitution after the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly. The rights of passage of a fledgling democracy demanded that the new legislature meet here to set the course of a newly independent India. The needs of leg­islature and government grew with time as the size of the council of ministers expanded along with the complexity of Parliament’s operations. From the early 1990s, in particular, the constraints of the building began to become more obvious. The decade was not without significance as it marked a change in India’s political and economic path with the adoption of reforms that would break from the socialist thinking of the past. The system of departmental and standing committees meant that Members of Parliament (MPs) and Parliament staff were engaged even when the two Houses were not in session while the footfalls of visitors rose too. There was an incremental addition to the facilities with a new parliamentary library and an additional annexe added to the Parliament House complex but soon the main building began to resemble a warren of crowded offices and rooms with abandoned furniture turning passage through the corridors of the upper floors into an obstacle race. More depressing was a gravy train aspect that crept into the functioning of Parliament House with cheap food becoming a prime attraction for hundreds of legislators, staff and visitors who came to the complex every day. A fire audit during the 16th Lok Sabha led to cooking gas cylinders being removed from the prem­ises, triggering a crisis of sorts. The emergency evacuation trapdoors near the presiding officers’ seats in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha had not been inspected for years and when an MP volunteered to check, he found the passages unusable.

Although considered from time to time, the proposal for a new Parliament took concrete shape after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s re-election in 2019. It is not a coincidence that the new Parliament, inaugurated by Modi on May 28, is not a stand­alone scheme. The new building, located near the road that sepa­rates Parliament from Rail Bhawan, is part of an overarching vision to redevelop a massive slice of real estate that stretches from the crumbling barracks adjoining the Rashtrapati Bhavan estate near South Avenue to the lawns on either side of Kartavya Path (formerly Rajpath) right up to India Gate. The change is visible and pro­foundly symbolic, beginning with the installation of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s statue under the stone umbrella at India Gate. The remodelling of the hexagon around India Gate, the creation of a new war memorial, and shifting of the eternal flame (Amar Jawan Jyoti), though not directly connected to the Central Vista-new Par­liament project, complete the picture. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs website outlines the soaring ambition behind the project. The redevelopment includes chambers for all MPs in place of Shram Shakti Bhawan, the Central Vista Avenue (Kartavya Path), 10 buildings of the new common Central Secretariat where most ministries will be housed, additional buildings for the Na­tional Archives, new Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) buildings, the official residences for the prime minister and the vice president, the executive enclave of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the Cabinet Secretariat, the National Security Council secretariat and relocation of the National Museum to the North and South Blocks. Hutments occupying some 90 acres would be relocated and the entire scheme is to be completed by 2026. The ob­jective is nothing short of reordering and reimagining the physical and political landscape of official Delhi to reflect a new vision that is a radical break with the hesitant, incremental tinkering of the past.

THE BOYCOTT OF the new Parliament’s inaugura­tion by several opposition parties led by Congress serves to underscore a political faultline that has deepened since 2014. The core of the opposition ensemble— Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC), Samajwadi Party (SP), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Left parties—has re­mained constant, with the addition of the Uddhav Thackeray Shiv Sena and Janata Dal (United), although the last was part of the opposition even in 2014. Their absence was never in doubt and the alleged sidelining of President Droupadi Murmu seemed to have less to do with any concern for the constitutional authority than a purely political call. The inauguration was attended by non- National Democratic Alliance (NDA) parties like the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP), Biju Janata Dal (BJD), Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) among others, and was imbued with cultural and political symbolism beginning with the placing of the Sengol, the sacred sceptre presented to Jawaharlal Nehru on the eve of Independence, in the Lok Sabha chamber. After inde­pendence, the Sengol was placed in the Anand Bhavan museum as a “golden walking stick” and that is where it had languished till its recent rediscovery. Congress and commentators opposed to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) question the Sengol’s link with the transfer of power, but the question as to how it ended up as part of Nehru’s personal collection has gone unanswered. The design and construction of the new Parliament reflects a deliber­ate use of material from different parts of the country. The new chambers for Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are fitted with modern conveniences and its look matches the existing buildings in the Parliament complex. While Modi said the new construction is a fitting vehicle to realise the ambitions of a resurgent India, his observation that “new goals can be reached only by treading new paths” best captures the political will and determination behind the refashioning of Delhi’s political geography.

The new Parliament is energy-efficient and comes with ad­equate parking for members. In the past, a concrete arena next to the reception offices served as parking with dozens of portacabins for paramilitary security personnel. There is a certain grandeur about the building that complements its utility, even though ul­timately the conduct of MPs will determine how Parliament is perceived. The more unruly protests, such as those seen during the passage of the farm laws, saw books being hurled at the chair, members standing on tables and MPs clashing with security staff in Rajya Sabha. There is no guarantee that the new chambers will not be witness to similar scenes. Almost everything about the old Parliament building, from its well-worn green and red carpeting to wooden desks in the Central Hall, shows signs of age. The move to the new building should provide an opportunity to refit and refurbish the older construction and remove its more significant artefacts to more secure lodgings. In its final execution, the new Parliament will be connected with the PMO-residence and the vice president’s residence by secure underground tunnels which will reduce disruptions caused by VVIP movement in and around Vijay Chowk. The new building has a seating capacity for 888 MPs in Lok Sabha, with an option to increase it to 1,272 during a joint session. Similarly, the Rajya Sabha chamber has a seating capacity for 384 members.

The Modi government that took office in 2014 was different not only from the Congress-led coalition it replaced but also previ­ous BJP-NDA regimes. The Modi establishment did not have the slightest desire to seek the acceptance of Delhi’s intellectual elite who had opposed the prime minister’s campaign tooth-and-nail. Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah (then BJP president) had a strong distaste for the trappings of Delhi’s patronage-driven culture, often labelled “Lutyens’ Delhi”, and were not interested in courting and seeking the endorsement of the capital’s chattering classes. The rapid overhaul of a familiar ecosystem that followed was disconcerting as it dawned on Delhi’s intellectual commis­sars that change was real and unambiguous. The first to go was the Planning Commission, ending a mai-baap (benefactor-recipient) re­lationship between the Centre and the states. NITI Aayog was born as a policy incubator that played a key role in fashioning roadmaps for the energy sector, Digital India, medical education, agriculture, and reorientation of Central schemes. The Central Vista project made the sense of displacement even more acute with its all-too-visible dimensions. The main opposition Congress and dozens of activists opposed the redevelopment, mounting legal challenges and political attacks to stall the projects. They correctly recognised the intended re-engineering of a key patch of central Delhi as a dis­mantling of the older structures of pelf and influence and a sweep­ing change that threatened to make their exile more permanent. The battle has not ended, with the next round due in 2024 when India votes again, but the inauguration of the new Parliament is a cast-in-concrete milestone that cannot be dislodged.

How the Central Vista-New Parliament Project Won the Legal Battle

TRANSPARENT BIDDING AND detailed consultations through an online process helped the Centre defeat a barrage of litigation challenging its decision to build a Central Secretariat complex along Kartavya Path and a new Parliament. The decision of Congress and a block of regional parties to boycott the inauguration of the new Parliament is con­sistent with their opposition to the project right from its inception.

In 2020, a petition challenged the clearances by the environment assess­ment committee, the Delhi Urban Arts Commission (DUAC), and the Heritage Conservation Committee (HCC), as well as land change use in the Delhi High Court. The case was transferred to the Supreme Court which upheld the clear­ances in a 2:1 verdict.

In April 2021, during the second wave of Covid, activists again filed a challenge in the Delhi High Court citing health risks to workers. The plea was dismissed with costs and the Central Vista rede­velopment was designated a project of “national importance”. The Centre assured the court that the workers were being housed on site. The Supreme Court upheld the verdict.

In September 2022, the Supreme Court dismissed a plea claiming that the Ashoka emblem-lion structure atop the new Parlia­ment was a misrepresentation as the lions looked “ferocious”. The plea mirrored a so­cial media campaign even though the lions were no different from the official design and it was the angle of view that generated differing perceptions about them.

Just ahead of the inauguration of the new Parliament, the apex court dismissed a plea claiming that the president had been insulted by being excluded from the inauguration. The court told the petitioner that he should be glad costs had not been imposed on him.

Concerns were raised about the up­rooting of jamun trees in the Central Vista complex. Most trees, fewer than a hundred in all, were relocated within the complex itself. The entire project will have more than 4,000 trees.

The Centre was able to face the legal challenges because it argued that the funds allocated to the Central Vista- Parliament project did not come at the expense of battling Covid. Stopping work would create liabilities for the govern­ment and was not in the interest of work­ers. It also said that the estimated cost of Rs 20,000 crore for the entire project was to be spent in tranches and not at one-go.

Tenders for design, architecture and engineering were invited through a two-stage online bid. A jury led by the head of the School of Planning and Architecture inspected the bids. A Central Public Works Department (CPWD) committee examined the proposal for floor area ratio (FAR) and ground coverage and referred it to DUAC, HCC, the Delhi Fire Service and other regulatory and administrative authorities.

Environmental clearance to the new Parliament was granted by the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) after consid­ering the objections. The assessment re­port for the new Parliament was accepted by EAC which comprised independent experts, and subsequently received the Supreme Court’s nod.

The online system of DUAC and HCC provides for uploading of drawings and scrutiny of proposals in a time-bound manner. All this and subsequent observa­tions are available in the public domain. Hard copies of drawings submitted by project proponents are also available among the records as also soft copies submitted online.

Central Vista-New ParliamentLutyens’ DelhiModi establishmentNew Parliament building