Pinakpani / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Cropped.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has approved ₹3,230 crore to turn the North and South Blocks into the Yuge Yugeen Bharat Museum. Only one date in the plan is near: the first gallery, on the theme of adornment, is due to open in North Block in the second half of 2027.
The rest runs to 2030-31. The Hindu reported that the project was cleared by the Public Investment Board in July and that the government offices that sat in the two buildings have been relocated. The museum will use about 1.78 lakh square metres, which an official statement described as the world's largest display area. That claim is the government's own and was not accompanied by a comparison in the reports reviewed.
Some numbers show how much is still undecided. About 1.8 million objects have been identified from the National Museum and other Culture Ministry museums, 52 Archaeological Survey of India site museums, state museums and private collections, but The Indian Express said content and collection analysis is still under way. Identified objects are a pool to choose from, not a display list. Other galleries are planned on architecture, mathematics and astronomy, languages and scripts, and faith, among other themes.
The museum is being equipped for over one crore visitors a year, the paper reported. That works out to about 27,000 a day, ITDC's arithmetic, in buildings that long housed ministries including Finance and Home. Los Angeles based architect Kulapat Yantrasast was named principal architect after a public tender last year, according to the same report.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the museum on 18 May 2023.
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