Tag: Parliament House

  • HISTORY: Parliament House was opened on January 18, 1927 with much fanfare

    By PTI

    NEW DELHI: The magnificent Parliament House, which may soon hand over its position as the country’s hallowed legislature to a new complex coming up in its vicinity, was inaugurated on this very day 96 years ago by the then Viceroy Lord Irwin.

    The historic building, an architectural marvel with its charming circular design and an impressive colonnade of 144 creamy sandstone on the first floor, was opened amid much fanfare at a time when the new imperial capital of the British Raj — New Delhi — was being built at a site in Raisina Hill area.

    According to archival documents and rare old images, a grand ceremony was held on January 18, 1927, to mark the opening of the majestic building, then called the Council House.

    Over a century ago, when the nation was still in the making and Independence 26 years away, Britain’s Duke of Connaught had laid the foundation stone of Parliament House on February 12, 1921, and said it would stand “as the symbol of India’s rebirth to yet higher destinies”.

    The building, with a diameter of 560 ft and a circumference of one-third of a mile, was designed by Sir Herbert Baker, who along with Sir Edwin Lutyens was chosen to design the new imperial capital in Delhi.

    Viceroy Lord Irwin ( Photo |WikimediaCommons)According to the book “New Delhi – Making of a Capital”, Lord Irwin had arrived in his viceregal carriage at a pavilion set up at the Great Place (now Vijay Chowk), and then “proceeded to open the door of the Council House with a golden key, handed to him by Sir Herbert Baker”.

    The opening of the Parliament House building, revered today as India’s temple of democracy, was much talked about then in the both domestic and foreign press.

    The sprawling edifice covering an area of nearly six acres and its creamy sandstone colonnade on the first floor is one of the most distinctive parliament buildings anywhere in the world, and one of the most defining and widely-recognised structures.

    The last legislative sitting in it till the end of the year 2022 was the Winter session of Parliament which concluded on December 23, six days ahead of schedule, with opposition members forcing repeated adjournments in the final days over their demand for a discussion on the border issue with China.

    Over the decades, as India evolved into the nation it is today, Parliament House has been witness to many a moment in history from cerebral debates to high-decibel, raucous discussions and the passing of legislations–some landmark and others controversial.

    In its 96-year-old journey, the iconic building has also seen the dawn of Independence in 1947, its famed chambers heard the echoes of the famous “Tryst With Destiny” speech by first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and it has witnessed the foundation laying of a new Sansad Bhavan, currently under construction.

    The new Parliament building, whose foundation was laid in December 2020 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is being built in its vicinity and the work was expected to be completed before the Winter Session.

    It was earlier expected to be completed in time for the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence Day on August 15 last year.

    The new building will also have a grand Constitution Hall to showcase India’s democratic heritage, a lounge for members of Parliament, a library, multiple committee rooms, dining areas and ample parking space.

    The multi-chequered history of the old Parliament building will be frozen in time if the Winter session perhaps was its last legislative sitting.

    The odyssey of the old Parliament building is also the journey of the new capital of India built under the rule of the then monarch King George V, later christened New Delhi by him in 1926, less than a month before the inauguration of the circular landmark.

    ALSO READ | Sovereignty of Parliament a myth, rule of law reality

    Parliament House and Sansad Bhawan are both used interchangeably in official parlance, while the building was named a Council House when it was conceived by the British in the 1920s after the imperial capital was shifted from Calcutta to Delhi.

    Lutyens and Baker gave shape to the new imperial capital, with the Viceroy’s House (now Rashtrapati Bhavan) and the North Block and South Block as the centrepiece of ‘New Delhi’, as the city was officially named in 1926.

    On February 12, 1931, Lord Irwin also dedicated the All India War Memorial to the nation in a solemn ceremony as part of the official inauguration ceremony of ‘New Delhi’ which started on February 10 and lasted about a week.

    While the tricolour replaced the Union Jack atop its majestic roof when India threw off the yokes of the British rule and the Viceroy House neighbouring it built around the same period soon assumed the avatar of the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the Parliament building has essentially remained timeless albeit for a change of few names.

    ALSO READ | Nuggets on governance from Parliament

    “Till the Council House or Parliament House as we know it today, was built, the legislature was housed in the iconic Old Secretariat building of the government, which today is home to the Delhi Assembly,” said Swapna Liddle, Delhi-based historian and author of ‘Connaught Place and the Making of New Delhi’.

    Once the new Parliament building, part of the redevelopment of Central Vista, is completed, India will in many ways, turn a page, since the opening of the old Parliament in 1927.

    “Today, you meet for the first time in your new and permanent home in Delhi,” Viceroy Lord Irwin had said, addressing the first session of the third legislative assembly on January 24, 1927.

    “In this chamber, the assembly has been provided with a setting worthy of its dignity and importance, and I can pay its designer no higher compliment than by expressing the wish with that the temper, in which the public affairs of India will be here conducted, may reflect the harmony of his conception,” he said.

    NEW DELHI: The magnificent Parliament House, which may soon hand over its position as the country’s hallowed legislature to a new complex coming up in its vicinity, was inaugurated on this very day 96 years ago by the then Viceroy Lord Irwin.

    The historic building, an architectural marvel with its charming circular design and an impressive colonnade of 144 creamy sandstone on the first floor, was opened amid much fanfare at a time when the new imperial capital of the British Raj — New Delhi — was being built at a site in Raisina Hill area.

    According to archival documents and rare old images, a grand ceremony was held on January 18, 1927, to mark the opening of the majestic building, then called the Council House.

    Over a century ago, when the nation was still in the making and Independence 26 years away, Britain’s Duke of Connaught had laid the foundation stone of Parliament House on February 12, 1921, and said it would stand “as the symbol of India’s rebirth to yet higher destinies”.

    The building, with a diameter of 560 ft and a circumference of one-third of a mile, was designed by Sir Herbert Baker, who along with Sir Edwin Lutyens was chosen to design the new imperial capital in Delhi.

    Viceroy Lord Irwin ( Photo |
    Wikimedia
    Commons)According to the book “New Delhi – Making of a Capital”, Lord Irwin had arrived in his viceregal carriage at a pavilion set up at the Great Place (now Vijay Chowk), and then “proceeded to open the door of the Council House with a golden key, handed to him by Sir Herbert Baker”.

    The opening of the Parliament House building, revered today as India’s temple of democracy, was much talked about then in the both domestic and foreign press.

    The sprawling edifice covering an area of nearly six acres and its creamy sandstone colonnade on the first floor is one of the most distinctive parliament buildings anywhere in the world, and one of the most defining and widely-recognised structures.

    The last legislative sitting in it till the end of the year 2022 was the Winter session of Parliament which concluded on December 23, six days ahead of schedule, with opposition members forcing repeated adjournments in the final days over their demand for a discussion on the border issue with China.

    Over the decades, as India evolved into the nation it is today, Parliament House has been witness to many a moment in history from cerebral debates to high-decibel, raucous discussions and the passing of legislations–some landmark and others controversial.

    In its 96-year-old journey, the iconic building has also seen the dawn of Independence in 1947, its famed chambers heard the echoes of the famous “Tryst With Destiny” speech by first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and it has witnessed the foundation laying of a new Sansad Bhavan, currently under construction.

    The new Parliament building, whose foundation was laid in December 2020 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is being built in its vicinity and the work was expected to be completed before the Winter Session.

    It was earlier expected to be completed in time for the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence Day on August 15 last year.

    The new building will also have a grand Constitution Hall to showcase India’s democratic heritage, a lounge for members of Parliament, a library, multiple committee rooms, dining areas and ample parking space.

    The multi-chequered history of the old Parliament building will be frozen in time if the Winter session perhaps was its last legislative sitting.

    The odyssey of the old Parliament building is also the journey of the new capital of India built under the rule of the then monarch King George V, later christened New Delhi by him in 1926, less than a month before the inauguration of the circular landmark.

    ALSO READ | Sovereignty of Parliament a myth, rule of law reality

    Parliament House and Sansad Bhawan are both used interchangeably in official parlance, while the building was named a Council House when it was conceived by the British in the 1920s after the imperial capital was shifted from Calcutta to Delhi.

    Lutyens and Baker gave shape to the new imperial capital, with the Viceroy’s House (now Rashtrapati Bhavan) and the North Block and South Block as the centrepiece of ‘New Delhi’, as the city was officially named in 1926.

    On February 12, 1931, Lord Irwin also dedicated the All India War Memorial to the nation in a solemn ceremony as part of the official inauguration ceremony of ‘New Delhi’ which started on February 10 and lasted about a week.

    While the tricolour replaced the Union Jack atop its majestic roof when India threw off the yokes of the British rule and the Viceroy House neighbouring it built around the same period soon assumed the avatar of the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the Parliament building has essentially remained timeless albeit for a change of few names.

    ALSO READ | Nuggets on governance from Parliament

    “Till the Council House or Parliament House as we know it today, was built, the legislature was housed in the iconic Old Secretariat building of the government, which today is home to the Delhi Assembly,” said Swapna Liddle, Delhi-based historian and author of ‘Connaught Place and the Making of New Delhi’.

    Once the new Parliament building, part of the redevelopment of Central Vista, is completed, India will in many ways, turn a page, since the opening of the old Parliament in 1927.

    “Today, you meet for the first time in your new and permanent home in Delhi,” Viceroy Lord Irwin had said, addressing the first session of the third legislative assembly on January 24, 1927.

    “In this chamber, the assembly has been provided with a setting worthy of its dignity and importance, and I can pay its designer no higher compliment than by expressing the wish with that the temper, in which the public affairs of India will be here conducted, may reflect the harmony of his conception,” he said.

  • Efforts are on to hold winter session in new Parliament House

    By Express News Service

    The construction work of the new Parliament House has been expedited to meet the deadline so that the upcoming winter session can be held in the building as planned by the Government, said the minister of state for housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) Kaushal Kishore.

    “The work is going on. Coronavirus pandemic slowed down the progress but it has been accelerated. We are making efforts to complete the project at the earliest. We are hopeful that the winter session will be conducted in the newly built Parliament House. Efforts are being made for the same,” Kishore told The New Indian Express (TNIE).

     Responding to the questions about the progress on the Central Vista project in the Rajya Sabha earlier this week, the minister said that 44 percent of physical progress had been achieved on which the Government has spent Rs 480 crore so far.

    “All the projects are monitored by MoHUA and Central Public Works Department (CPWD) regularly on a weekly basis to avoid delays and any inconvenience to the general public,” the minister said in the House.

    ALSO READ: DMRC sign pact with CPWD to set up new ‘loop corridor’ to connect Central Vista offices

    The Central Vista Master Plan includes construction of a new parliament building, vice president enclave, and common central secretariat buildings 1, 2 & 3, and redevelopment of Central Vista Avenue.

    Total expenditure occurred on various components of the entire Central Vista Master Plan until now stands at Rs 1,146 crore. In 2020-21, it had spent Rs 419.55 crore on the project and in the current financial year 2021-22, expenditure of Rs 1,423 crore is expected, said the minister.

    The government is likely to spend Rs 2,285 crore on the entire Central Vista project in the next financial year (2022-23). Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the new Parliament in December 2020 and the work had begun a month later.  

    ALSO READ: Street vendors set up makeshift shops inside the Central Vista

    The construction of the new vice president’s enclave, which includes a residence for the vice president and a secretariat, has achieved three percent physical progress. The redevelopment project of Central Vista Avenue– from Vijay Chowk to India Gate– has met the target of 80 percent physical progress, and Rs 441 crore has been spent on this so far.

    The construction of three new buildings as part of a new common central secretariat has achieved three percent physical progress, and Rs 243 crore has so far been spent on the project, stated the minister in Rajya Sabha.

  • Farmers gear up for upcoming protest outside Parliament; Bharatiya Kisan Union dissolves UP executive council

    By PTI
    NEW DELHI: Convoys of farmers from different parts of Punjab have started their journeys towards Delhi to take part in planned protests outside the Parliament House during the monsoon session, a statement by Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) said on Monday.

    “We already announced plans to stage protests during the monsoon session of Parliament starting July 22.”

    “Dozens of caravans from different districts including Ludhiana, Sangrur, Mansa, Bathinda, Barnala, Ropar, Fazilka and Faridkot have left already started for Singhu and Tikri Borders,” said the umbrella body of over 40 farmers unions which are agitating since November to press for the scrapping of the three new agri laws and seeking a legal guarantee for Minimum Support Price (MSP).

    It also reiterated its intention of sending a warning letter to the opposition parties by July 17 to raise their voice in Parliament for the rights of the farmers.

    “Then, every day during the monsoon session of Parliament from July 22 till the end of the session, five members from each farmers’ organisation, totalling at least 200 farmers, will protest outside Parliament,” SKM said.

    The government, which has been projecting the laws as major agricultural reforms, has offered to bring amendments but has ruled out their scrapping.

    The SKM also said that protests against the BJP leaders were continuing in Punjab.

    “Today, a rally was organised against BJP leader Harjeet Grewal at Dhanola of Barnala district.”

    “After gathering at Dhanola’s Dana Mandi, the protesters reached Dhanola Bazaar chanting slogans for repeal of the Black Farm Laws and enactment of a law guaranteeing MSP,” the statement said.

    The Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), an influential farmers’ group in north India, on Monday dissolved its executive councils and cells in Uttar Pradesh.

    The BKU’s national executive took the decision in view of an ongoing review of the union, but a revamped UP executive would be formed soon, its media in-charge Dharmendra Malik said.

    “All executive councils of BKU in Uttar Pradesh, including the men’s, women’s and youth wing, besides district and zonal cells, have been dissolved,” Malik said in a statement.

    Except for BKU’s UP unit president Rajveer Singh Jadaun, all other office bearers of all cells have also been relieved of their charges, he said.

    “On the basis of the review in the organisation, all the committees will be formed again soon,” Malik added.

    The BKU, led by its president Naresh Tikait, is part of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha, an umbrella body of various farmer unions protesting against the three contentious farm laws at Delhi’s borders since November 2020.

    BKU national spokesperson Rakesh Tikait is leading the union’s hundreds of supporters at Ghazipur on the Delhi-UP border for nearly eight months now.

  • Tryst with history: 100 years since Duke of Connaught laid foundation stone of Parliament House

    By PTI
    NEW DELHI: One hundred years ago, when the nation was still in the making and Independence 26 years away, Britain’s Duke of Connaught laid the foundation stone of Parliament House and said it would stand “as the symbol of India’s rebirth to yet higher destinies”.

    On Friday, a century from that February 12, 1921 day, as parliamentarians from various parties sat in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha for the budget session and work continued on a new parliament building close by, the milestone was a blip in history unnoticed by many.

    The building, with a diameter of 560 ft and circumference of one-third of a mile, was designed by Sir Herbert Baker, who along with Sir Edwin Lutyens was chosen to design the new imperial capital in Delhi on a site in the Raisina Hill area.

    Placing the first building block of what would become the imposing circular, colonnaded structure that is the heartbeat of India’s parliamentary democracy, Prince Arthur, the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, had recalled the grandeur of the Acropolis in Athens.

    He was an uncle of King George V, then reigning monarch of the British Empire, and laid a huge block of red sandstone bearing inscriptions in Hindi, English and Urdu in that order.

    It carries his name and the historic date in Roman numbers — “XII February A.D.MCMXXI”.

    “I need only recall the Acropolis of Athens, the Capital of Rome, and the great cities of the East famous in past ages for their splendour and culture.

    India herself is rich in such precious legacies.

    From the granite pillars on which the Apostle Emperor Asoka engraved his imperishable edicts, onwards through the chequered centuries, down to the splendid palaces of the Moghal Emperors, every age has left behind it some monument commensurate with its own achievements,” the Duke of Connaught said.

    Records show the grand ceremony took place with then Viceroy Lord Chelmsford, a recreational club named after him still stands a stone’s throw away — and a large number of ruling chiefs from princely states and other dignitaries in attendance.

    A 1921 publication of the Superintendent Government Printing, Calcutta, on the Duke of Connaught’s visit has full texts of the speeches made on the occasion.

    At the foundation laying ceremony, he said, “These buildings will not only be the home of new representative institutions which mark a vast stride forward in the political development of India and of the British Empire, but will, I trust, stand for future generations as the symbol of India’s rebirth to yet higher destinies.

    ” All great rulers, every great people, every great civilization have left their own record in stone and bronze and marble, as well as in the pages of history”, he said.

    The Duke of Connaught, after whom Delhi’s first and biggest shopping plaza is named, extolled the value of architecture and underlined its role in politics and nation-building.

    According to old archival images, an elegant pavilion was constructed on the site during the foundation stone ceremony.

    Later, a circular railway track was temporarily laid around the structure during construction to transport raw material.

    The architectural masterpiece, which was originally called Council House, was inaugurated six years later in 1927, 20 years before India attained its freedom on August 15, 1947, by then Viceroy Lord Irwin.

    According to the plan, the building was to be constructed to house the imperial legislative chambers — the central legislative assembly (which took the form of the Lok Sabha), the Council of State (became Rajya Sabha) and the Chambers of Princes (now used for other purposes) — along with a Central Hall to house a library and a place to hold joint sessions.

    All within the aesthetic round structure.

    The sprawling edifice covering an area of nearly six acres and its creamy sandstone colonnade of 144 pillars on the first floor is one of the most distinctive parliament buildings anywhere in the world.

    In 1929, Bhagat Singh hurled a bomb into its chambers.

    At the Central Hall is where Jawaharlal Nehru welcomed India’s ‘tryst with destiny’ as India became independent on August 15, 1947, and where the Constitution took shape.

    Over the decades, as India evolved into the nation it is today, Parliament House has been witness to many a moment in history from cerebral debates to high-decibel, raucous discussions and the passing of legislations, some landmark and others controversial.

    Two days before the Duke of Connaught laid the foundation stone of Parliament House, he laid the foundation stone of the All India War Memorial, or India Gate in Delhi as it known today.

    In 1911, King George held a grand Durbar in Delhi where he also announced the shifting of the imperial capital from Calcutta to Delhi.

    Lutyens and Baker gave shape to the new imperial capital, with the Viceroy’s House (now Rashtrapati Bhavan) and the North Block and South Block as the centrepiece of ‘New Delhi’, as the city was officially named in 1926.

    On February 12, 1931, Lord Irwin also dedicated the All India War Memorial to the nation in a solemn ceremony as part of the official inauguration ceremony of ‘New Delhi’ which started on February 10 and lasted about a week.

    “Till the Council House or Parliament House as we know it today, was built, the legislature was housed in the iconic Old Secretariat building of the the government, which today is home to the Delhi Assembly,” said Swapna Liddle, Delhi-based historian and author of “Connaught Place and the Making of New Delhi”.

    On February 8, 1921, the Duke of Connaught inaugurated the Chamber of Princes, and the next day opened the Legislative Assembly and the Council of State in an impressive ceremony at the Old Secretariat, according to the Superintendent Government Printing.

    In December this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of a new Parliament House to be built close to the old one at a mammoth cost, drawing criticism from several heritage lovers and architecture experts who fear the old heritage structure might get overshadowed.

    The new building is expected to be completed in time for the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence Day.