Central Vista: Born out of necessity

What might be

Speaking in favour of the re-design of the Central Vista is akin to being the Devil’s Advocate. But that is exactly what I plan to do.

The Central Secretariat is spread across 47 buildings across the national capital, housing more than 70,000 employees. A walk through the government offices in the Central Government Office Complex is a nightmare, with rows of cupboards lining up the corridors, files and documents stacked in spaces below flights of stairs, and ill-lit buildings always overflowing with the ever-burgeoning staff.

The 93-year-old iconic Parliament building has been crying for repair and retrofit for more than a decade now. Lok Sabha Speakers from Somnath Chatterjee and Meira Kumar to Sumitra Mahajan and incumbent Om Birla have spoken in favour of a new Parliament building.

Architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker planned the Central Vista of New Delhi that includes iconic buildings such as the Rashtrapati Bhawan, North Block, South Block, Parliament Building and India Gate. These buildings took shape over a 20-year period from 1911-31, when the new capital was inaugurated.

As the newly Independent India got to work, new office spaces were created on either side of Rajpath, which were vast expanses of empty land. Krishi Bhawan and Udyog Bhawan came up in 1957, Rail Bhawan and Vigyan Bhawan in 1962 – all designed by R I Gehlote, an architect with the Central Public Works Department.

Read: Central Vista enshrines the history of the nation’s most central institutions

However, those buildings were built for a particular era with a certain strength of workforce in mind. India has grown manifold over the past six decades and so has the government and its many departments. The buildings developed on either side of Rajpath, including Nirman Bhawan and Shastri Bhawan, too, were found to be inadequate, forcing offices to be established such as the Central Government Office Complex on the fringes of Lutyen’s Delhi, while some shifted to places such as Rouse Avenue and Qutub Institutional Area.

Most of these buildings were energy intensive and gradually turning into dinghy office spaces for the ever-increasing workforce.

Piecemeal efforts to add modern buildings have been made over the past decade or so which have led to the development of the Indira Paryavaran Bhawan that houses the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change and the Prithvi Bhawan, that houses the Ministry of Earth Sciences.

Another recent addition is the Jawaharlal Nehru Bhawan that houses the Ministry of External Affairs. The new structures have been built as per the Green Building Code that leads to energy savings, integration of daylight, use of solar energy, giving rise to a new construction culture in the country.

Similar modern buildings are under construction for the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.

The Central Vista re-development project proposes to bring all government offices into a single location -- along the flanks of Rajpath, along with a new conference centre to replace Vigyan Bhawan.

Under the plan, 10 new buildings are to come up within four plots of fenced government land without encroaching the existing lawns and open spaces on either side of Rajpath.

According to architect Bimal Patel of HCP Design, which won the competition to re-design the Central Vista, the existing government buildings make inefficient use of land and he plans to add thrice the existing office space on the same plot.

Also on cards is underground connectivity to the two metro lines that criss-cross the Central Vista and the office building complex, encouraging use of public transport.

The existing lawns on either side of Rajpath are expected to get a facelift with better signages, dedicated vending spaces, designated parking spaces and spacious under passes for people at intersections with the busy Mansingh Road, Janpath and Rafi Marg.

Built in 1927, the Parliament building is suffering from over-utilisation and has been showing signs of distress for the past several years. The safety issue came into focus when bricks and concrete chunks from the ceiling came crashing down in Room 37 in June 2009.

The room, allotted to then Petroleum Minister Murli Deora, was located below the kitchen and seepage of water from it had caused damage to the ceiling.

Three year later, a fire in the first floor kitchen brought into focus the issue of fire safety in Parliament building. The Fire Department had refused to give a safety certificate after an audit found that several temporary offices had blocked emergency exits and staircases.

Several temporary structures still remain in place and finding time for repair and restoration is extremely difficult as the building is in constant use, even when Parliament is not in session.

Over the years, additional spaces have been created by building the Annexe to the Parliament. However, this has failed to ease the load on the main building.

Several Speakers have toyed with idea of a new Parliament building. Sumitra Mahajan had suggested a new building on a plot of land next to South Block. Lutyens himself had envisioned a mirror image of Parliament building across the Rajpath.

The need for a new Parliament building assumes importance if the government decides to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha to ensure adequate representation of the people in the House. The current strength of Lok Sabha – 543 – has been fixed based on the 1971 census. If the numbers are revised to reflect present-day reality, the strength of Lok Sabha is expected to go up by a sizable number.

Such a revision has been under discussion for at least 15 years – much as the deliberations for a new Parliament building.

The new Parliament building would be a triangular structure right opposite the existing building. It will have two separate Houses for Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, with plans to use the Lower House for joint sittings of Parliament.

The proposed building will seat two members on a bench, quite unlike the crowded seating arrangement in the current building. The new building will also be equipped with modern technology and storage space. In addition, each MP is likely to get office space in the new building.

The Central Vista revamp also plans to shift the official residences of the Vice President and the Prime Minister from the busy Maulana Azad Road and Lok Kalyan Marg to the relatively less frequented environs in the vicinity of North and South Blocks. The shift would put an end to restrictions on traffic every time the VVIP steps out of the house.

The plan also covers turning the restricted area of North and South Blocks into a public space and converting the iconic buildings built by Herbert Baker into national museums.

Additionally, 48 acres of the Presidential Estate will be converted into an arboretum on the lines of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, with glass houses creating different climatic zones of the country to showcase the rich biodiversity.

I end with a simple hope that the new environs would remain as accessible to the common man as the current India Gate area, given that Delhiites have very few public places to hang out in.