Vajpayee gets prominent place at media centre

It’s not only governors on the move, but even plaques put up or removed by the previous UPA government are being changed.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar on Tuesday got a foundation stone laid by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for the National Media Centre, which was relegated to an insignificant location, installed at a prominent place.

The minister directed the officials to put the plaque at the entrance of the main building of the NMC after he visited the premises here on Tuesday morning. The plaque mentions that the foundation stone of the National Media Centre was laid by Vajpayee on December 5, 2001 in presence of the then Union ministers L K Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Ananth Kumar and Ramesh Bais.

While most of the officials said that the plaque installed was kept at an insignificant location in the building, others said the minister had a new plaque made and got it installed in a day. The State-of art building, constructed on 1.95 acres of land at a cost of about Rs 60 crore during Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, was jointly inaugurated by former prime minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi with much fanfare on August 24 last year. After inauguration, the then government also maintained that the NMC was initially conceptualised by the Press Information Bureau (PIB) of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in 1989 to facilitate greater interaction between the government and the media with a state-of- the-art equipped media centre. 

The National Media Centre was built to serve as the communication hub of the government. Its swanky building is equipped with state-of-the-art technology to meet the requirements of the international and Indian media for their professional and communication needs.