Home Ministry moves out of British-era North Block

The iconic North Block building at Raisina Hills in Lutyens Delhi will no longer be home to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). The Ministry has been known by the address for nearly 90 years.

This week, several MHA offices started shifting to the Common Central Secretariat (CCS) building on Janpath as part of the Central Vista redevelopment plan.

The British-era buildings – North Block and South Block – house key administrative buildings such as office of the Prime Minister, and Ministries of Defence, Home, External Affairs and Finance.

These red-sandstone buildings were built by British architect Herbert Baker and inaugurated in 1921. Once all the offices move out of both the blocks, these will be turned into a museum. Named ‘Yuge Yugeen Bharat National Museum’, it will display an estimated 25,000-30,000 artefacts, and is likely to be one of the largest museums in the world.

On July 17, an order issued by the MHA in Hindi said the process of shifting all offices located at the North Block to CCS-3 had been initiated and nodal authorities designated for the smooth transfer.

As a part of the Central Vista redevelopment, the Centre had proposed a CCS of 10 office buildings and a conference centre on Kartavya Path to accommodate all Ministries. The first three of these office buildings are nearly completed.

347 rooms for MHA

Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan was among the first to move to the new office complex. The MHA has been allotted 347 rooms in the new complex.

According to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), “the imperial buildings were unquestionably claimed by the people of India as the seat of the Government of India after Independence,” adding that the most important Ministries were housed in the North and South Blocks.

It said that the objective of building CCS is to improve coordination, collaboration and synergy among various organs of the Central Government that will boost productivity and obviate the need for unnecessary travel of documents and officials from the offices spread over different parts of the city. This will reduce congestion and pollution as well. “Shifting all Central Government offices to the CCS buildings will get various Ministries/ departments or their attached/ subordinate offices vacate rented accommodations, which will save around ₹1,000 crore per annum,” the MoHUA said.

According to a government order, CCS-3 is to house the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser, Ministries of External Affairs, Petroleum and Natural Gas, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Rural Development and Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT).