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Delhi, built, rebuilt (at least nine times, they say), is a large complex of medieval and modern edifices, as the recent AI Summit underscored once again in 2026. At its heart stands the magic mountain, Raisina Hill with a grand red stone Rashtrapati Bhawan at the top. It is flanked by what, until recently, were the two seats of utmost power in India: the North Block housing the finance ministry and the South Block that housed the all-powerful PMO and also the Ministry of Defence. From Jawaharlal Nehru to Manmohan Singh, they all ruled from here, and so did Narendra Modi, our current prime minister, shielded from the rest of the city – and to some extent the country – by a series of red sandstone walls guarded by gun-toting commandos, barbed-wire fencing, and movable roadblocks that can be moved across the roads to halt traffic to make way for VIP cavalcades. 

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

Till about a decade ago, the part of Delhi, known as Lutyens’ Delhi after its original architect and planner Edwin Lutyens, was an open space with a thin trickle of locals and tourists in groups and couples flowing through the wide lawns that flanked India Gate with fountains gushing at two ends even during the years of drought. A good third of that public space has now made way for new government buildings designed by Gujarati architect Bimal Patel. Most of the green area is now hard to access for the public or even the media. 

Since 2014 when the new government led by Prime Minister Modi, took oath of office, there has been talk about how the Lutyens’ zone needed to be redesigned . It symbolised a colonial era of dominance and subjugation filled with painful memories and loss of India’s basic identity as a Hindu nation.

Jitendra Prasad, Union Minister of State for Science and Technology and Minister of State Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) described the transition of top........

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