Nirman Bhawan was the first to go down in May, after which the hammer came down on Udyog Bhawan; Shastri Bhawan and Krishi Bhawan will be the next to be demolished. With that, the Capital’s unassuming Nehruvian-era buildings, which served as the nation’s back offices, housing several key Central ministries and thousands of staff, will make way for a new central secretariat, Kartavya Bhawan.
Government records documenting their construction, along with publications from the time, tell the story of how a newly Independent nation sought to catch up with the demands of an expanding governance machinery despite limited resources.
In 1947, the Union government primarily worked out of the North Block and South Block Secretariat buildings that were designed by Herbert Baker and Edwin Lutyens. Behind these blocks were World War II-era hutments that accommodated more government officials, according to the records.
The task of expanding the Secretariat fell on the Central Public Works Department (CPWD), then a department under the Ministry of Works, Housing and Supply. It was during the tenure of Shridhar Krishna Joglekar, only the second Indian to hold the post after G B Deolikar, as the CPWD’s chief architect from 1952 to 1968, that the four Bhawans were completed.
In their 2015 book, India: Modern Architectures in History, Peter Scriver and Amit Srivastava wrote that the senior CPWD architects were the most powerful players in modern planning and building in post-Independence India, but remained subordinate to the engineering hierarchy.
“Within the still-expansive territorial domain of post-Partition India, the CPWD remained responsible for producing and maintaining all buildings and infrastructure under the direct control of the central government. Still dominated by budget-minded engineers, however, such extensive power and potential to change tended to be mediated by the inertia of convention,” they wrote.
The first building to come up was Krishi Bhawan, which houses the Ministry of Agriculture. Indian Builder, a magazine published at the time, noted the significance of the project in its March 1957 edition. A copy of the magazine, shared by photographer Ram Rahman, whose father, Habib Rahman, was the chief architect of the CPWD in the 1970s, showed photographs of the completed “multi-storeyed office buildings for the Government of India”, along with advertisements by the various contractors who worked on the project.
The magazine noted that the foundation stone of Krishi Bhawan was laid on June 16, 1952, by Sardar Swaran Singh, who was then the minister in charge of the Works Ministry. The project was estimated to have cost Rs 10 crore.
Indian Builder further noted its economical design, restricted floor heights, and provision for future lifts. According to the magazine, the floor height had been restricted to 11 feet in the interest of economy. “This was the barest minimum permissible as the air conditioning ducts were to run along the ceilings of the corridors…” Though it was not possible to install all the lifts then, lift wells had been provided at various places, the magazine added. It also identified B S Godbole as the architect of the building and Joglekar as the chief architect.
The next building to come up was Udyog Bhawan, which housed the Ministry of Commerce until recently, among others. According to the CPWD’s Central Vista project website, it was R I Gehlote who designed the building in 1957.
Soon after, another multi-storeyed Secretariat building was proposed at 1, Rajendra Prasad Road, triggering a wider debate over the expansion of the Central Secretariat. Files accessed from the National Archives show that the CPWD prepared the proposal in 1957, but the Cabinet approved it only in 1960. The delay was partly because the CPWD’s design did not conform to the Town Planning Organisation’s (TPO) recommendation for a 20-storey office tower in the open area around Vijay Chowk.
On April 11, 1960, at a meeting in the CPWD chief engineer’s room, CPWD officials resisted the idea of construction around Vijay Chowk. The chief architect, Joglekar, rejected the TPO’s recommendation, arguing that it would violate Lutyens’ vision.
“Shri Joglekar stated that the constructions proposed in Central Vista would in no way enhance the grandeur and splendour of the magnificent view of North and South blocks available at present. They were in violent conflict with Mr Lutyens’ conceptions and composition of Central Vista development… It was decided that functionally and aesthetically, no proposal to extend building activity beyond the existing boundaries into the Central Vista should be contemplated,” the minutes of the meeting noted.
Eventually, at its December 22, 1960, meeting, the Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Nehru decided to keep the proposed buildings restricted to fewer storeys, with no construction around Vijay Chowk.
Cost was a primary concern. “Construction of office buildings of more than 6 storeys would involve prestressed concrete construction or steel frames, high-speed lifts and escalators, requiring foreign exchange, which Government can ill afford at present. Also, in view of the subsoil water in Delhi, it will be inadvisable to undertake the construction of buildings more than six storeys high,” according to a Cabinet note prepared by Secretary T Sivasankar.
Another concern was the message that a 20-storey government building would send to the citizens of a newly independent country still grappling with widespread poverty. “Although the buildings so far put up by the Central PWD are only six-storeyed ones on which the maximum possible economy has been achieved and which are utility buildings designed to meet functional needs, there has been criticism in Parliament of extravagance in constructing large palatial and ‘prestige’ buildings. If skyscrapers, as proposed by the TPO, are built, it would be difficult to counter the criticism that money is being squandered on lavish construction when it ought to be conserved for urgent and productive uses,” the Cabinet note said.
On December 22, 1960, the Cabinet, including Nehru, Home Minister G B Pant, Finance Minister Morarji Desai, Labour and Employment Minister Gulzarilal Nanda and Commerce Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, approved the plan, largely accepting the CPWD’s objections to the TPO’s proposal.
Minutes of the meeting, circulated on January 2, 1961, said that the Cabinet had decided on the principles to be followed for the expansion of the Central Secretariat. “The buildings should ordinarily be six-storeyed buildings. But, to avoid monotony of appearance and to provide breaks in the skyline, some of the buildings may be even seven-storeyed, or eight-storeyed, or nine-storeyed. No building should, however, be constructed containing more than nine storeys. There should be no encroachment on the open area of the Central Vista between the existing building lines. No building should be constructed for the present on the land surrounding Vijay Chowk,” it decided.
At a follow-up Cabinet meeting on December 31, 1960, the Cabinet approved a multi-storey building adjoining Krishi Bhawan, as well as a National Theatre opposite the National Museum. While the National Theatre project was later shelved, the building next to Krishi Bhawan was constructed and named Shastri Bhawan in honour of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri after his death in 1966. Nirman Bhawan, too, was completed in the 1960s.
However, many of the proposals finalised at the time never saw the light of day. One was to construct a circular building, mirroring Parliament, on Plot 36 of the Central Vista. The minutes of a meeting in the Secretary’s office in January 1961 showed that there was a “difference of opinion” on the matter. Decades later, Plot 36, along with the adjoining Plot 38, would be cleared and become the site for the most important office in the area — the Prime Minister’s Office, which was named Seva Teerth and inaugurated in February this year.
The old Udyog Bhawan in 1962. (Express Archive) 
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