India’s Parliament moved into a brand-new building in 2023, replacing a structure that had housed the country’s legislature since colonial times. This article covers the new building’s cost and features, and the specific controversy that led 19 opposition parties to boycott its inauguration.
Why a New Building
The decision to build a new Parliament building formed part of the larger Central Vista redevelopment project, a roughly $2.8 billion overhaul of central New Delhi’s government precinct, with the new Parliament building itself carrying an estimated cost of approximately $120 million, according to TIME’s coverage of the project. The government’s stated justification centred on the old building’s age and physical limitations, noting it had not been designed to comfortably accommodate the larger number of legislators any future delimitation exercise would likely require, alongside general modernisation needs for a legislature building originally constructed under British colonial rule in the 1920s.
The Inauguration
Modi formally inaugurated the new Parliament building on May 28, 2023. As part of the ceremony, a historic ceremonial sceptre known as the Sengol, associated with a Chola-dynasty era tradition of power transfer and reportedly presented to Jawaharlal Nehru around the time of India’s 1947 independence, was installed in the new Lok Sabha chamber, with Home Minister Amit Shah describing it publicly as intended to symbolise the “spirit of freedom.”
The Opposition Boycott
Nineteen opposition parties boycotted the inauguration ceremony entirely, and the specific reason centred not on the building itself but on who was presiding over the ceremony. According to TIME’s reporting, the boycotting parties objected specifically to Modi personally inaugurating the building rather than President Droupadi Murmu doing so, arguing in a joint statement that the decision represented, in their words, “not only a grave insult but a direct assault on our democracy,” given that India’s president, while largely a ceremonial figure without day-to-day executive authority, holds the position of the country’s highest constitutional office. A lawyer separately petitioned the Supreme Court arguing the President, not the Prime Minister, should have presided over the ceremony.
The Government’s Position
The government did not accept the opposition’s framing of the inauguration as a constitutional slight, treating the Prime Minister’s role in inaugurating a government building as a fairly standard practice, consistent with how numerous other government infrastructure projects have been inaugurated during Modi’s tenure, rather than a departure requiring the President’s specific involvement.
What the New Building Actually Offers
Beyond the symbolism, the building itself was designed with a considerably larger seating capacity than its predecessor, intended specifically to accommodate a future expansion in the number of Lok Sabha seats once delimitation, the process of redrawing parliamentary constituencies based on updated population data, eventually takes place, a process covered in more detail in our separate article on the Women’s Reservation Bill, whose own implementation timeline is tied to that same future delimitation exercise.
A Building That Continued to Generate Debate
Even after its opening, the new building continued to draw periodic scrutiny and criticism, including reports of specific construction and design issues surfacing in its first months of use, alongside continued debate over the wisdom of the Central Vista project’s overall cost given competing demands on government infrastructure spending, a debate that has continued in the years since the building’s 2023 opening rather than being resolved by the inauguration itself.
What Happened to the Old Building
The previous Parliament building, in continuous use since 1927, was not demolished after the move; it was retained and redesignated as a heritage building for archival and ceremonial purposes rather than torn down, a decision that let the government present the transition as an addition to India’s parliamentary heritage rather than a replacement erasing the older structure, even as the actual day-to-day work of both houses of Parliament shifted entirely to the new building.
The Design and Construction Timeline
The building’s design, credited to architect Bimal Patel, drew explicitly on Indian architectural and cultural motifs across its three chambers for the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha, and a central constitutional hall, a deliberate departure from the more purely colonial-era architectural style of its predecessor. Construction ran on an unusually compressed timeline for a project of this scale and symbolic importance, moving from foundation to completion in under three years, a pace that itself became a subject of some scrutiny given the specific construction and finish issues that surfaced after the building entered use.
Bottom Line
India’s new Parliament building opened in May 2023 as part of a broader, costly redevelopment of central New Delhi’s government precinct, a project defended by the government on modernisation and future-capacity grounds and criticised by 19 opposition parties specifically over the decision to have the Prime Minister, rather than the President, preside over its inauguration, a procedural and symbolic dispute that overshadowed much of the building’s own physical debut.
Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available government records and news reports listed below. It is written for general informational purposes and does not represent an official statement from the Government of India or the Lok Sabha Secretariat.
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