PM Narendra Modi paid a surprise visit to the upcoming new parliament building on 30th March 2023. He inspected works in progress and observed the facilities coming up at both houses of the Parliament.
His cabinet colleagues posted pictures of the visit:
The iconic, circular-shaped, India’s present Parliament House is a colonial-era building designed by British architects Sir Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker. Its design has striking resemblance to Chousath Yogini Temple (or Mitawali Mahadev Temple) in Mitaoli village, Morena in Chambal Valley ((Madhya Pradesh)) that has 64 small temples of Lord Shiva in the outer circular corridor. It took six years to construct (1921-1927) the building after capital of India shifted from Calcutta to New Delhi. Originally called the Council House, the building housed the Imperial Legislative Council.
The present building served as independent India’s first Parliament and witnessed the adoption of the Constitution of India. Two floors were added in 1956 to address the demand for more space. In 2006, the Parliament Museum was added to showcase the 2,500 years of rich democratic heritage of India. The building is almost 100 years old and had to be modified to suit the need of a modern Parliament.
Over the years, the parliamentary activities and the number of employees and visitors have increased manifold. There is no record or document of the original design of the building. The new constructions and modifications have been done in an ad-hoc manner. The present building does not meet the current requirements in terms of space, amenities and technology.
Need for the New Parliament Building was felt for several reasons (such as narrow seating space for MPs, distressed infrastructure, obsolete communication structures, safety concerns and inadequate workspace for employees). Therefore, new building was planned as part of the Central Vista Redevelopment Project.
The foundation stone of the new building with new features to meet the current needs was laid on 10th December 2020.
New building will have a built area of 20,866 m2. The chambers for the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha will have large seating capacities (888 seats in the Lok Sabha chamber and 384 seats in the Rajya Sabha chamber) to accommodate more members than are currently present, since the number of MPs may increase with India’s growing population and consequent future delimitation. The Lok Sabha chamber will be able to house 1,272 members in case of a joint session. There will be offices of ministers and committee rooms.
The construction project is likely to be completed by August 2023.
As evident from pictures of visit of PM Modi, major milestones are already achieved, and the construction and development work seem to progress satisfactorily as per timeline.
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