Central Vista: India’s Modi blasted for $2.8bn project amid COVID

Modi pushes forward with building new parliament and other structures, as critics accuse him of misplaced priorities.

New Delhi, India – Almost the entire Indian capital, ravaged by a ferocious second wave of the coronavirus and forced to go under a lockdown, has come to a standstill – except for a “vanity project” undertaken by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, triggering widespread criticism. The $2.8bn Central Vista Redevelopment Project, currently under way in the heart of New Delhi, includes the construction of a new triangular-shaped parliament building, a new residential complex to house the prime minister and the vice president, and the refurbishment and construction of important bureaucratic and security office buildings for the federal government. The project is spread over a 3.2km-stretch between the sprawling presidential residence on the city’s Raisina Hills and India Gate, a war memorial, in what is known as Lutyens’ Delhi, named after the British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens who designed most of the buildings in the early 20th century when India was under the British rule.