Houses in harmony

The new Parliament building is expected to be ready for the budget session, but the old building will continue to host offices

- SONI MISHRA

Often, as the old makes way for the new, the past re-emerges in the most intriguing ways. Sir Edwin Lutyens, the architect of New Delhi, had in 1928, just a year after the Parliament house was inaugurated, proposed constructing a mirror image of the building. The second building that would have been constructed across the Central Vista Avenue would have housed the Parliament secretariat. The proposal did not take off.

Almost a century later, Lutyens’s proposal was dusted off and became the basis for a discussion on the need to construct a new Parliament building. The current one, it was increasingly felt, was over-utilised and showed signs of wear and tear. The new building—the centrepiece of the ambitious Central Vista Redevelopment Project—is not circular though. And here, Lutyens’s co-architect in the design of New Delhi, Sir Herbert Baker, could claim vindication. His original design for the Parliament house, a triangular structure, finds resonance, even if inadvertently. Lutyens had prevailed upon him to alter his plan and thus was born the colosseum-shaped edifice.

A new, triangular Parliament house has taken shape. Though not at the location Lutyens had chosen for his proposed lookalike, the site is just a stone’s throw away from the iconic building. The original plan was to get the building ready before the winter session of Parliament. According to officials in the Lok Sabha Secretariat, the building is almost ready and the budget session is expected to be held in the new Parliament. Plot No 118, located at the heart of the country’s preeminent real estate, is, at present, the hub of hectic construction activity. The plot of land will soon bear the most important address in the country—Sansad Bhavan.