Work order issued to reconstruct heritage school building on Beach Road

Puducherry Smart City cancels contractor, assigns NBCC to complete reconstruction of historic French girls school by August.

Irked over the inordinate delay in the completion of the reconstruction of Pensionnat De Jeunes Filles, a heritage school building on the Beach Road, the Puducherry Smart City Development Limited (PSCDL) cancelled the work order issued to the contractor. It, instead, issued a fresh order to NBCC (India) Ltd., a Central government undertaking, to complete the work by August this year.

The foundation stone for the reconstruction of Pensionnat De Jeunes Filles — India’s only French girls high school run by the Puducherry government — was laid in February 2023. The work was supposed to be completed in March 2025.

According to a PSCDL official, the decision to terminate the contract followed a failure by the contractor, who was awarded the work by the Public Works Department (PWD), in finishing it on time, despite extension of deadlines and a revised estimate.

“When the contractor was about to begin the work, there was pressure from the Puducherry government to change the building design as they wanted a part of the original space to be diverted for commercial purpose. The work got delayed due to various reasons, including approval for the revised building design and subsequent slow pace of work by the contractor. Finally, PSCDL terminated the contract and has now awarded it to NBCC (India) Ltd.”

The two-storey French architecture-styled building, which remained in a precarious condition, was provisionally shut down along with two other government schools that functioned out of heritage buildings in 2014, after the collapse of the 144-year-old Marie (Town Hall) building on the Beach Promenade.

In the 1980s, the school faced a different a kind of danger when there was a proposal to demolish it to create space for a government building. There were protests, and parents and teachers submitted a petition to the government to preserve the structure. The then Lt. Governor, T.P. Tiwari, passed an order in 1984 to save the school from being razed.

Historical significance