Now, North, South Blocks to showcase 5,000 years of Indian history

PM Modi has given the culture ministry the target of year 2028 to complete and inaugurate the first phase of the proposed Yuge Yugeen Bharat National Museum.

Work has begun on restoring the North and South Blocks to their original design following which the project to convert them into the ambitious Yuge Yugeen Bharat National Museum will start by a consortium selected via a global tender, Union Culture Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat has said.

In an interview to PTI Videos on Wednesday, he also shared more details on the status of the mega project, and said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given the culture ministry the target of year 2028 to complete and inaugurate its first phase.

Billed to be the largest museum in the world, it will have eight thematic segments telling the story of India spanning over 5,000 years.

The new museum, to be housed in the North Block and the South Block in the heart of the country's capital, will cover an area of nearly 1.5 lakh sqm with 950 rooms spread over a basement and three storeys, officials earlier said.

While the North Block, which earlier housed the home ministry, the finance ministry and other government departments, has been vacated, the South Block -- housing some key ministries -- too is planned to be vacated gradually.

Museum project: Vacating and restoring the Blocks

"In South Block, the Prime Minister's Office has been vacated, the defence minister has also done it, the external affairs ministry has shifted partially, and after that almost in 2-3 months we will get that building," Shekhawat said.

The new capital of Delhi was designed and built from 1912-1931 by Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens along with Sir Herbert Baker, and the two imposing buildings -- North Block and South Block -- along with the Rashtrapati Bhavan (earlier Viceroy's House) form the centrepiece of the Rasinia Hill complex.

In the last close to 100 years, a lot of "internal alterations" were done in these buildings, the minister noted.

"Partitions were built somewhere, bathrooms were added at some place, air conditioning was installed somewhere, storage space was added at some place. Someone made changes inside their chambers, somewhere the orientation was changed. So, right now, we are working on restoring the building to its original design, the tender for which has been issued, and the work has started," Shekhawat told PTI.

Preserving heritage and modernising the museum

Once the building is restored, and its strength and other things are verified, then "we will start working on it with the aim of converting it into a museum," he added. The minister emphasised that the plan is to maintain the design of the original rooms, their architectural sanctity, but "some changes" will be made that are necessary from the perspective of setting up a museum by adaptively reusing an old structure. "As you would have experienced, there are three courtyards each in our North and South Blocks. Now those courtyards cannot be kept open. So we will cover those courtyards with all-weather glass roofs. And, we will also close that courtyard, so that the courtyard itself will become a part of a museum. Right now, our verandas and galleries are open. We will cover all those galleries and make them a part of the museum.

"We will add glass, by maintaining heritage and architectural sanctity, and to give a holistic experience, of entry and exit in the museum. Besides, we will make an underground tunnel to connect both the buildings. Apart from this, from the reception area to the cafeteria, from experience centre to ticketing area, and to the conference areas and amphitheatre facilities, we have almost completed our design on the table," he said.

Yuge Yugeen Bharat Museum: A world-class destination

Today, the world's largest museum is the Louvre Museum in France. When both these wings of the museums get completed, they will have almost one and a half times the exhibition area than the famed museum in Paris, the minister said.

He shared that the kinds of experts -- a heritage architect and a museologist -- which were needed for the project to convert the two Blocks into a museum, were selected through a global-level tender, and several consortiums participated in it.

"One consortium that was a fit, technically as also financially viable, from both perspectives, we have onboarded it. So, whatever work was required to be done on the table, we have started working on it.. The target of 2028 has been given by the prime minister that we should at least inaugurate the first phase, we should work towards completing it with full resolve, energy and dedication," the minister said.

Prime Minister Modi had unveiled a video walkthrough for the planned museum at the inauguration of the first International Museum Expo here on May 18, 2023. An agreement was signed in December 2024 between the National Museum and France Museums Developpement (FMD) for the technical cooperation for the development of the upcoming museum.

This museum will celebrate India's timeless and eternal cultural heritage and connect its glorious past with a prosperous future.

In February, Modi had underlined that this project will transform the North Block and the South Block, "once a centre of power, into a centre of culture".

Shekhwat, in February, in a written response to a query in Rajya Sabha, had informed Parliament, "For Yuge Yugeen Bharat Museum (YYBM), objects will be drawn from six Ministry of Culture (MoC) museums, 52 Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) site museums, repatriated artefacts, and long-term loans from international institutions, state-level museums, and prominent private collections."

Once fully completed, the museum is expected to attract an average of 30,000-35,000 visitors daily. Work is underway to ensure that the metro service reaches near it, and there is a bus terminus near it, the minister said during the interview.