New Parliament building to be ready in 21 months: Om Birla

Construction on the new Parliament building has started and it would be completed within the next 21 months, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla said on Friday.

According to Birla, the new building, part of the Central Vista redevelopment plan, will come up on a 13 acre plot opposite the existing 93-year-old Parliament building that houses the reception barracks for secretarial and security staff and a small in-house nursery.

“The total expenditure on the construction of the new building is Rs 892 crore,” the Lok Sabha Speaker said.

The new Parliament building with a built-up area of approximately 60,000 metre square, as against the 8,838 meter square area of the old building.

Earlier this month, Tata Projects was awarded the tender to construct the new building complex.

The project has been mired in controversy with opposition parties such as the Congress, NCP, Trinamool, DMK terming the expenditure on the new Parliament building as “wasteful”, particularly at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The existing Parliament building was commissioned in 1927 and ranks among the Grade-I heritage structures in the country.

“Its facilities and amenities are highly inadequate to meet the current demand of Parliament. There is an acute shortage of office space and there are no individual chambers for Members of Parliament. This building was not meant to be for bicameral Parliament and has been over-stressed through large scale retrofitting done over the years,” Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri had told the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

Puri rejected the opposition allegations of the project being a wasteful expenditure.

“In the current economic scenario, the project shall generate a large number of direct and indirect employment which could be an important fulcrum for economic revival,” the minister had said.