Central Vista: India’s Modi blasted for $2.8bn project amid COVID
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…. The project is spread over a 3.2km-stretch between the sprawling presidential residence on the city’s Raisina Hills and India Gate….
In a controversial order earlier this year, the Supreme Court designated the project as an “essential service”. But the opposition parties have questioned the timing and necessity of what it calls Modi’s “vanity project”….
In a letter to Modi on Wednesday, 12 opposition leaders… asked the prime minister to stop the “Central Vista construction and [use] the money for oxygen and vaccines”…. In another letter to Modi last week, 76 public intellectuals from across the world,… criticised the “extravagant project” in the “midst of a devastating pandemic…. many public health experts have also chastised the government for spending such an exorbitant amount of money on “vanity” projects….
