New Delhi: According to officials associated with the project, the additions made to the old Parliament House over the years will be removed even after the new Parliament House inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi starts functioning on Sunday.
Workers were seen giving finishing touches to the project on Tuesday. According to two sources close to the project, the new building will take about a month to be completed, possibly in time for the monsoon session, which begins in July.
A source said that “ad hoc additions” to the old building would be removed and it would be “restored”. This, the source said, would allow the building, which had become overcrowded over the years, to “breathe”.
Another source said that the old and new buildings would serve as a complex. A Lok Sabha official said the offices would continue to function from the old building. When asked how the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha chambers in the old building would be used in future, HCP Design, Planning and Management Pvt. Ltd., the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) consultant for the project, said the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs is in the best position to answer this. A spokesperson for the ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Construction of the new Parliament building began in January 2021 as a part of the larger Central Vista redevelopment masterplan prepared by the HCP for the CPWD. When asked about the challenges faced during the construction, the HCP said in a written reply that the project began in January 2021 instead of September 2020 as scheduled due to various reasons including the SC stay.
“For a project on a tight deadline of 2 years, this was a significant loss of time,” the firm said. “The second wave of Covid-19 hit New Delhi soon after construction started (March to June 2021). This has caused a serious slowdown in the planned construction programme.
The triangular plot on which the building was constructed next to the heritage Parliament building did not leave much room for material movement. The HCP said that the challenge was overcome with the help of the Delhi Traffic Police.
In a written reply, the Advisor said: “The new Parliament House is located on a plot that used to be the parking and service infrastructure for the old Parliament House. This infrastructure includes an electric substation, an HVAC plant and primary power supply to the Parliament House.” The underground water tank was included. The overground structures have been temporarily shifted within the same plot. The construction had to be carefully planned in such a way that these structures continue to perform their functions without any interruption.
Eventually, it said, the new structures would “absorb these services for both buildings”.
The HCP said that another challenge was to preserve the trees. “The plot on which the new building has been constructed had many majestic trees in its periphery. To preserve them, some parts of the utility buildings were built with special foundations—excavated vertically so that the root bowls of the trees would not be disturbed.
The construction of the Old Parliament House was carried out between 1921 and 1927 and two storeys were later added in 1956 to meet the growing needs. According to the government’s official Central Vista website, “the building was to be substantially modified in line with the purpose of a modern parliament.”
