While elements of the new Parliament building may be ready to host the second part of the Budget Session in March, construction work will continue long into the summer, according to various sources familiar with the situation.
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Friday ruled out the likelihood of the new Parliament being ready for the start of the Budget Session on January 31.
In a tweet, he stated that the building was “still under construction” and that President Droupadi Murmu’s address to the joint session of both Houses on January 31 will be place in the existing Parliament House.
The Speaker did not address the topic of the location of the remaining Budget Session or whether or not Nirmala Sitharaman, the Finance Minister, will deliver her budget speech on February 1 in the current Parliament.
While the Lok Sabha chamber in the new building is almost finished, first and second floors, which will house offices for Ministers and the Parliament secretariat, would take many more months to complete, according to officials of the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry and the Lok Sabha Secretariat who spoke on the record under the condition of anonymity.
One of the executives stated that the vendor in question has handled the delay in the import of network switches, which are essential to connect many devices in a facility such as computers, servers, and printers.
Another official, however, stated that the process of completing the building, including its network rooms, would take several more months. A third source stated that while attempts were being made to prepare the Lok Sabha chamber for the second part of the Budget Session, prominent functionaries’ offices would only be relocated from the present Parliament House once the building work was done.
The government declared a November 2022 completion date for the construction of the new triangular-shaped Parliament building on a land next to the current Parliament House in January 2021.
The government’s design consultant for the Central Vista renovation, HCP Design, Planning and Management, directed by architect Bimal Patel, designed the project, which is being carried out by Tata Projects Ltd.
The new Parliament building will have a 10-building Common Central Secretariat, new residences for the Prime Minister and Vice-President, and an Executive Enclave with the Prime Minister’s Office built along the 3-km stretch from Rashtrapati Bhavan to India Gate, according to the proposed masterplan.
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