New Delhi: The authorities of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha have started the process of issuing smart cards to MPs to enter the new Parliament House, indicating that the under-construction building may be operational in the near future. The smart card will work on facial recognition system.
“A new, smart card-based identity card is being prepared for Members of Parliament for entry into the new Parliament House. The smart card based identity card will be highly secure with several security features embedded in the system,” said the bulletins of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha secretariats.
The Lok Sabha Secretariat has set up a facilitation counter near the VIP Gate of Parliament House Annexe for the purpose of collecting personal and biometric data. “The process also includes a photograph for the smart card and registration on the facial recognition system,” the circular said.
MPs now use identity cards – green for Lok Sabha members and red for Rajya Sabha MPs, and embedded with a radio-frequency tag that helps identify the cardholder.
“The new smart card,” said a senior functionary, “will make access easier but at the same time, make the premises of the new Parliament House more secure. This is a part of the overall objective of creating a digital Sansad (Parliament).
The process has started ahead of the budget session beginning January 31 and the construction of the new Parliament House is underway.
Two senior Lok Sabha officials said no formal instructions have been given so far on using the new building for the first part of the budget session, but officials ruled out the possibility of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presenting the Union Budget in the new building in February. Don’t do it. 1.
No date has been set for the opening of the building. “But the process shows that the government plans to make the building functional in the near future,” said another senior functionary. “Parliamentary top brass wanted to start the budget session of Parliament from the new building. Now we are expecting that the building will start functioning from the second half of the budget session. The second half of the session usually starts from mid-March.
The new Parliament House, being built at a cost of Rs 971 crore, is part of the Rs 13,500-crore Central Vista project which includes a new vista that has already been opened, the Parliament House and a Central Secretariat housing government departments.
According to two senior officials of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, the work on the ground floor and the ground floor (where the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha and MPs’ lounge will be located) is nearing completion.
“In the new Lok Sabha, the carpet work is over and furniture is being installed. Carpeting work is going on in Rajya Sabha. The work on the ground floor and lower floor will be completed by January,” said one of the officials.
However, the work on the first and second floors (which will house the offices) of the new four-storey Parliament House will take time. “It is a big project and in such a short span of time the building is almost ready. Although the construction work was to start in September 2020, we could start work only in January 2021. It took a long time to transfer the utilities. It was not an easy task to carry out the construction considering all the constraints,” said the second official.
The second official said the delivery of multimedia systems and IT network switches for the project has been delayed due to the impact on the supply chain due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
The construction work of the road connecting the new and old parliament buildings is underway and will be completed by January.
