More than a decade after the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) moved its headquarters from the dilapidated 160-year-old Town Hall in the heart of Chandni Chowk to a swanky new 28-storey skyscraper at Minto Road, the civic body plans to give a new lease of life to its old offices.
The Town Hall at Chandni Chowk as it stands today. (Sanchit Khanna/HT Photo)
A senior MCD official said, “As long as the municipal body operated from this complex, the structure used to undergo annual repairs, waterproofing and maintenance. However, over the last decade, the lime-mortar structure has gradually become weak — water has seeped into various sections, trees have grown through walls, and the windows have shattered.”
“The project will include comprehensive repair and facade improvement and we hope to complete it before the G20 summit in September,” the official said.
Bids have been invited for the improvement, repair and facelift of the 13,735 square metre complex, which includes the main Town Hall building, the press building and the old dispensary, the official said, adding that the repair work will likely cost around ₹68 lakh and take five months to complete.
“The complex can be divided into three sections — the main building, the courtyard and the press building. Since the Victorian era structures use construction materials like stone, lime plaster, burnt bricks and timber, it requires a much more comprehensive refurbishing,” the official said.
Under the current refurbishing proposal, the corporation will undertake the maintenance work of the bricks, replace damaged doors, grills, windows and ventilators, undertake plastering work, and will repaint the entire complex. “The old layers of oil paint and distemper will be replaced by waterproof cement paints,” the official added.
The MCD first came into existence in 1958 under an Act of Parliament. Before that, the Delhi Municipal Commission looked at the city’s civic needs since 1862, and the Town Hall complex housed this civic body from 1866 onwards.
The place where the building stands was once a garden and inn developed by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan’s daughter Jahanara. The Begum Ki Sarai (Lady’s Inn), as it was called in the mid-1600s, was a guest house for important and wealthy visitors and traders.
According to the civic body’s official history, the work on the current Town Hall complex started in 1860 and took three years to complete. Authors Gaynor Barton and Laurraine Malone, in their book titled Old Delhi, write that the building was initially known as the “Lawrence Institute, and housed the Delhi College of Higher Studies, before it was bought by the then municipality for ₹135,457 (US$2,000) in 1866. Besides government offices, the building also had a library and a European club.”
During the British Raj, a bronze statue of Queen Victoria stood in front of the hall, but after Independence, that was replaced by a statue of Arya Samaj leader Swami Shraddhanand.
In 1958, the MCD was formed by an Act of Parliament, and the civic body was housed in the Town Hall till between 2012, when the corporation moved to its present address, the Civic Centre.
Deep Chand Mathur, former director (press and information), who was with MCD from 1980 to 2011, said the need for a new building arose due to space and accessibility issues. “The city had expanded rapidly and we needed more office space. At the same time, the old Town Hall was not accessible as it was located in the highly congested Chandni Chowk. Reaching the Town Hall became a problem when foreign dignitaries arrived. MCD needed a modern municipal headquarters,” he said.
However, even as the civic body moved away, the Town Hall complex itself fell into disuse and disrepair.
“Some of the rooms have been used by the Election Commission to store EVMs,” the MCD official quoted above said.
Over the last decade, the erstwhile North MCD formulated several plans to turn the complex into either a boutique hotel or cultural centre, but no concrete step materialised. In June 2021, the civic body also invited bids from private hotel operators to take up the redevelopment of the property, but the plan to run a heritage hotel found no takers.
Several of these plans fell through after the three erstwhile MCDs were merged into a unified body.
Meanwhile, efforts to turn the Town Hall complex into a museum with the help of the Union culture ministry has also started gathering steam. “A high-level team headed by a secretary-level officer from the culture ministry inspected the Town Hall complex on February 7 and sought details about the MCD proposals. We are hoping that the final decision in this regard will be taken soon,” a second municipal official, said on condition of anonymity.
Last year, North MCD mayor Raja Iqbal Singh granted an anticipatory in-principal approval to a proposal to hand over the property to the ministry on lease. The civic body had written a letter to the ministry expressing its intent to provide the property on a 33-year lease and under the proposal, the ministry will be expected to conserve it and turn it into a museum along with other facilities such a library and a recreational centre.
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