The Congress criticised the government for moving ahead with its plan to construct a new Parliament building at a time when the country is battling the COVID-19 pandemic. It showed the government’s “absurd priorities” at a time when the country was facing a health crisis and hunger looming large due to the extended lockdown, the party said.
The Central Vista Committee, at a meeting on April 23, approved the construction of a new Parliament building, The Hindu reported on Friday. The construction is a part of the larger revamp of the entire 3-km Central Vista from Rashtrapati Bhavan till India Gate, proposed by the Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry and its construction agency, the CPWD.
“It shows the warped, distorted and completely absurd priorities of this government. Bang in the middle of COVID-19, they are fast-tracking, hot-footing the project,” Congress national spokesperson and Rajya Sabha member Abhishek Manu Singhvi said.
Mr. Singhvi called it a “hobby horse” of the government. “It is the intention to leave in a personal manner your own stamp, by littering the green verdant landscape of Rajpath with new buildings in the name of modernisation. A more horrible attack on the heart and pysche of Delhi cannot be imagined,” he said.
Nearly 14 lakh ventilators could be purchased with this money and even the migrant workers stranded across various cities, staring at hunger, could be, if needed, flown back in planes using this money. “We would earnestly with folded hands urge the Supreme Court to pay attention to this. We would request the courts that this should be the priorities,” he added.
Jairam Ramesh’s plea
His colleague and Rajya Sabha member Jairam Ramesh, wrote to House Chairman Venkaiah Naidu, urging him to oppose the project. The MP Local Area Development fund had been frozen for two years. The dearness allowance of government employees had been frozen till mid-2021 and there were reports that the defence expenditure too shall be substantially cut. At such a time, Mr. Ramesh wrote, “the Central Vista Redevelopment Project, of which you have been a strong votary, continues unmindful of the financial crisis staring the government in its face and unmindful of all objections that have been raised against it.”
Mr. Ramesh urged Mr. Naidu to speak out and support a freeze on the Central Vista Redevelopment Project. “It is an atrocious sense of priority to embark on a new Parliament building and on new government offices when crores and crores of our people have lost their livelihoods and the economy is in doldrums,” he said.
In a tweet earlier, Mr. Ramesh said that “the many ‘Modi Mahals’ can and must wait!”