The Prime Minister has moved in

The delayed arrival made Singh miss the peak of the jamun season, fruits which grow in abundance in the bungalows and have been plucked and presented to the six Prime Ministers who have lived here. The delay in the PM’s arrival in the high-security zone is being attributed to the modifications the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) was asked to make for the new occupants. The Prime Minister’s wife, Gursharan Kaur, on inspection, for one, had found the kitchen shelves and slabs too high. “The kitchen shelves almost touched the ceiling. I simply couldn’t reach them,” Kaur told more than one person.

After Rajiv Gandhi first moved into RCR, the place witnessed a series of renovation and beutification drives. What’s there now is one bungalow (No 9 RCR) as the close-proximity headquarters of the Special Protection Group, the PM’s residential office (No 7 RCR), the bungalow into which the Singh’s have moved (No 5 RCR) and the bungalow with Vajpayee was using (No 3 RCR) which is still under renovation. The last bungalow in the row (No 1 RCR) is reserved exclusively for a helipad, from which the PM can make short-haul helicopter flights like he did to the airport last Thursday.

Members of the Vajpayee PMO reveal how all the structural changes in the RCR complex would be hurridly completed when the PM was touring. In fact, the Vajpayee Government achieved a lot in turning the place around. The biggest value addition was construction of the Panchvati complex three years ago, at a cost of around Rs 1 crore.

In it, facilities for film screening and video conferencing were added, with enough seating space for the entire Cabinet, which the Prime Ministers’s office in South Block can no longer accommodate.

Besides the structural additions, a lot of redesigning has also been done jointly by the CPWD and a private firm, Vivek Gupta Associates. So the PM’s house now has some fancy subdued lighting, false ceilings and large bay windows, with a good view of the lush RCR lawns with peacocks strutting around.

The Vajpayee PMO had made a practice of changing the paintings on the walls of the PM’s house every few months by selecting a new lot from the collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art.

With five bungalows to maintain, the staff at the RCR complex has also been fast multiplying. There is an exclusive housekeeping unit, called the General Hospitality Organisation, with dozens of other security-cleared employees handling the upkeep of the house, the kitchen and the lawns.

In all, along with the SPG staff, the PM’s house has an excess of 800 employees. There are five chefs working in RCR, one of them an Italian chef.

It remains to be seen whether the Singh PMO would continue the process of remodifying the RCR complex. Besides the proposal of rebuilding one bungalow, the Vajpayee PMO also had plans to construct a permanant, modern reception complex at a huge cost. But Manmohan Singh might well bring a whiff of simple living into the RCR complex and besides the spanking new kitchen arrangement, might leave everything else untouched.