Over six months after inaugurating it, the Municipal Corportaion of Delhi (MCD) is finally ready to shift to its new headquarters in the tallest building of the city from Thursday.
A four-phased shifting of the offices of the civic agency to the 28-storey Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Civi Centre is beginning on Thursday and will continue till December 8, officials said.
According to an MCD office order on "allotment of floor/space and shifting plan", the corporation will move most of the key departments, including health, education, engineering and house tax as well as the office of the Municipal Commissioner to the new building.
However, offices the Mayor, leader of the House and leader of Opposition will run from the old Town Hall building for now. The 112-metre Civic Centre, built at a cost of Rs 650 crore, was inaugurated by Union home minister P. Chidambaram on April 22.
The building, which will cater to 20,000 footfalls a day, will bring under one roof the deliberative wing and different offices of the civic body, which looks after 96 per cent of areas of Delhi.
The existing MCD headquarters in Town Hall may be turned into a heritage hotel or a museum. The new headquarters of MCD has been constructed in an area of 1.16 lakh square metres with a concept of “green building”, which is designed for optimum utilisation of natural resources like air, water and sunlight.
However, its construction had been hit by delays with the MCD missing several deadlines for shifting its offices. During the monsoon season, there also were complaints of waterlogging inside the building.
The opposition Congress has repeatedly flayed the ruling BJP over delays in construction of the building and shifting of the offices. The foundation stone for the building was laid by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1994 and work started in 2005, with Malyasia-based IJM Corporation as contractor.
The Civic Centre has four six-storey blocks, one 28-storey tower block in addition to services block, water treatment plant and sewage treatment plant.
The installed system caters to the best engineering practices in energy and natural resources conservation measures. The building is provided with rain water harvesting, energy efficient lighting and day light sensor systems.
Water conservation will be ascertained through flow sensors and self-closing taps, officials said. The Civic Centre has an auditorium with capacity of 1,000 seats, an art gallery, restaurant, a 33KV sub-station for dedicated and interrupted power supply, waiting areas, fountains, an open-air theatre, three halls for holding MCD House and Standing Committee meetings as well as a separate media centre.