BJP’s swanky new headquarters to be inaugurated soon
NEW DELHI: The BJP will soon get a new address.
The new headquarters of India’s ruling party is a swanky five-storied building on the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg which is expected to be inaugurated within a month or two.
The building with parking in the basement and modern facilities has been built in a record time of about one-and-half-years.
“The construction is 99% complete,” a BJP leader said. The only work pending was installation of TV sets, laying of telephone lines and a few others things, he added.
The party has not finalised a date for inauguration, but another leader said it will be a grand event.
The office, located adjacent to the Ranjit Singh flyover that connects central and old Delhi, will have separate chambers for the party’s national office bearers, a huge convention hall, a library, video conferencing facilities and media rooms for spokespersons.
Entry to some parts of this building, such as digital operations, will be restricted.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the new office on August 18, 2016. This was a year and half after the ministry of urban development’s land screening panel cleared the allotment of the plot to the BJP on February 26, 2015.
The BJP’s applications to the Union urban development ministry for a plot of land got stuck twice — once in 2002 and then in 2006. The application was finally approved only in 2015 after the BJP came to power at the Centre.
A party’s strength in the Parliament decides the size of the land it is entitled to. A party with 101 to 200 members in both the Houses is entitled to two acres. More than 200 members of Parliament entitle a party four acres, according to allotment rules framed for political parties in 2006 by the UPA government.
The rules, however, are silent on what happens when a party’s tally takes a hit.
Before it swept to power in May, the BJP, headquartered at 11 Ashoka Road, was eligible to two acres.