Efforts are underway to hand over the iconic North and South Blocks on Raisina Hill by next June to allow for their makeover into the mooted Yuge Yugeen Bharat Museum (YYBM). According to sources, at the meeting of the project review group, constituted to oversee the Common Central Secretariat (CCS) component of the redeveloping Central Vista, it was noted that since three buildings under the CCS project had already reached a stage close to completion, the exercise of vacating the old secretariat offices—containing ministries of home, finance, and defence—had to be completed by mid-2025.
Minister Piyush Goyal, Minister Manohar Lal, and other union ministers attended the meeting. Their offices are likely to shift first to new buildings; CCS 1, 2, and 3, which are likely to be ready by January.
Officials in the meeting were asked to speed up the construction so that North and South Blocks are vacated for the development of a museum. “Conservation and restoration work can start only after the buildings are vacated,” said an official handling the project. Originally, the CCS was to be completed by March 2024, but the revised timeline drew no response from the ministry concerned – Housing and Urban Affairs.
The development of the museum has involved talks with the Culture Ministry and was first envisioned for the accessibility of North and South Blocks before December this year. A French know-how museum transformation, in a different mold from that of the former Finance Ministry, currently houses France’s famous Louvre. YYBM plans were announced during Prime Minister Modi’s first international museum expo last May, held in Delhi, where an agreement would soon be discussed with an agency in France to solidify the details of the project.
