MPs to Centre: Reopen Central Hall where ‘we buried our differences’
Aditi Tandon
New Delhi, July 21
The Sunday all-party meeting on the eve of the Budget Session was not about divisive issues alone.
Several opposition leaders and some NDA MPs used the occasion to raise a matter of nostalgia as they sought the reopening of the old Parliament’s Central Hall where parliamentarians, over the years, rose above party politics over endless beverage servings perfectly brewed by staffers of Tea and Coffee Board of India.
In literal disuse since the members of Parliament moved to the new building on September 19, 2023, the Central Hall still beckons MPs, said many leaders today.
“In the all-party meeting of floor leaders chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, there was a universal demand for the Central Hall to be opened again for MPs to mingle with each other,” Congress chief whip in Rajya Sabha Jairam Ramesh said after the meeting.
Ramesh later said the Central Hall was a place where differences on the floor of the House were forgotten and MPs across parties gathered together often. “It was a place where MPs could buttonhole ministers for a conversation, a place where the media could also interact with the political leaders freely,” said the veteran Congressman.
Even when the old Parliament was being vacated following the inauguration of the new in September last, the nostalgia over the Central Hall had been the highlight of the farewell. Union minister Jitendra Singh had in his speech that day mentioned how the Central Hall, a witness to India’s march from pre to post-independence, evoked awe every time he crossed it.
“Whenever I crossed through the Central Hall, I consciously looked at the plaque carrying the inscription which mentioned that the Constituent Assembly of India sat in this hall from December 1946 to January 1950 to frame the Constitution of India. Looking at this plate each time gave me a feeling of a brush with history,” Singh, reanointed minister in NDA 3.0, had said at the time.
The Central Hall witnessed the sittings of the Imperial Central Assembly during the British Rule. Later the Constituent Assembly sittings also took place in the Central Hall.
