End of era as MHA 1st govt unit to fully vacate imperial Sectt

Curtains fell on an era as the Ministry of Home Affairs this week became the first government segment to fully vacate North Block, one of the two Secretariat buildings British architect Herbert Baker designed in the early 1900s to meet the governance needs of the British Raj.

The shift came after 98 years of occupation of the most majestic office complex the British ever built here, its design meant to inspire awe among ordinary Indians.

The MHA now has a new home — a 347-room complex in the Common Central Secretariat (CCS), a sprawling compound of 10 office buildings, perched along Janpath Road. The Home Ministry has been allotted CCS-3, with other blocks in the works.

A part of the Central Vista Redevelopment Project, the CCS will gradually house all central ministries and departments, currently scattered around Delhi, some housed in rented accommodations. An official account estimates savings worth Rs 1,000 crore annually once this consolidation concludes.

More than anything else, the shifting out of North and South Blocks, according to government sources, signifies the shedding of a mighty colonial legacy.

“This is in line with the ‘paanch pran’ (five pledges) Prime Minister Narendra Modi took from the Red Fort in his 2022 Independence Day speech,” said a senior MHA official, reflecting on full vacation of the ministry’s North Block office on July 31.

“Shed the colonial baggage, erase all forms of slavery and subjugation,” was one of PM’s five vows that set the context for the Centre to move out of colonial-era buildings into the indigenously created office complexes.

It was in 1926-27 that the government departments under the British rule completed their transfer from temporary pre-war quarters in Delhi’s Civil Lines area to the Secretariat buildings—North and South Block—designed by Herbert Baker on the Raisina Hill. The blocks, each three stories high and nearly a quarter of a mile long, housed every administrative department of the government.

Historical text, “Indian Summer: Lutyens, Baker and Imperial India”, records that the dominating hilltop position of the two Secretariat buildings, “a Sahib site, removed from ordinary traffic was meant to impress Indians and indeed to inspire a sense of reverence in all who approached”.

“The Secretariat’s location served practical needs due to its proximity to the Viceroy’s house (now Rashtrapati Bhavan). Baker thought that for the government house to have been the sole splendid occupant of Raisina’s crest would have given too pointed an emphasis to the Viceroy as supreme authority and believed that Members of the Council and Departmental Secretaries when installed in grand new buildings, would rise to the distinction thus given their office,” the account states.

Noting that the Secretariats were meant to house the elite Indian Civil Service, the book speaks of them as a special corps more powerful than even the royalty.

“Normally of long tenure, members of this exalted cadre enjoyed a reputation for matchless integrity and scrupulous fairness. By comparison, parliamentary control seemed remote and insubstantial, Indian legislators’ rhetoric biased and ineffectual and viceregal policies transient and erratic... Malcolm Hailey, then Governor General of Punjab, remarked privately that the Government of India had always been more important than its head. How appropriate then was the site accorded to Bakers’ two secretariat blocks (North and South), its aloofness and acknowledgement of Olympian detachment, its pre-eminence and explicit recognition of real authority,” the text says.

Citing the historical context of the Secretariat buildings and the architectural philosophy thereof, a senior official today said, “The government is finally vacating exalted offices created in imperial times to detach it from the commoners. We are returning to our people.” Next in line to shift out of Secretariat buildings are the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministries of Finance, Defence and External Affairs.

Once vacated, the Secretariat complex will make way for the Yuge Yugeen Bharat National Museum for which the Ministry of Culture had last December announced a landmark partnership with France Museums Développement (FMD). The project will span nearly 1.55 lakh square metres across the iconic North Block and South Block.