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I-Day: ‘At Home’ ceremony to be held at Ceremonial Hall, not Mughal Gardens
Inclement weather this Independence Day will not come in the way of guests having a good time at the ‘At Home’ ceremony to be hosted by President Pranab Mukherjee.
Inclement weather this Independence Day will not come in the way of guests having a good time at the ‘At Home’ ceremony to be hosted by President Pranab Mukherjee.
The customary ‘At Home’ -- hosted by the President on Republic Day and Independence Day at the Mughal Gardens -- will this year be held for the first time inside the Ceremonial Hall.
In the past, the Hall has been the venue for the banquet held in honour of US President Barack Obama and more recently for the Inter-State Council meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Incidentally, the 55m x 41m Ceremonial Hall, a recent addition to historic edifice, owes its existence to inclement weather on Independence Day.
The year was 2011 and the day of India’s Independence. The venue was the verdant Mughal Garden, a perfect setting for an exclusive get-together of who’s who. Everything went by the book until it started raining.
The guests -- senior ministers, politicians, diplomats, artists, men in uniform -- in their formal attires had to be rushed inside.
The doors to the ornate halls, Ashoka -- with its exquisite Persian ceiling fresco and Durbar Hall where India’s first governor-general Chakravarti Rajagopalachari took his oath -- were thrown open and the whole exercise adroitly carried out by the president’s staff.
While the then president Pratibha Patil herself was seated in the Ashoka Hall, which is higher in the pecking order of the halls, the guests had to be seated on the basis of protocol. But officials recall it was hard to seat guests in different halls and there were a few gaffes.
The incident became the rallying point for Patil to push for a ceremonial hall that could be used as venue for state functions, especially in times of unfavourable weather.
Ultimately, the Heritage Conservation Committee (HCC) that monitors heritage structures and ensures their protection sought a conservation plan, which paved the way for the Ceremonial Hall.
Big enough to accommodate 1,200 guests, the Hall was inaugurated by President Mukherjee in 2013.
The only glitch in moving the ‘At Home’ indoor is the shrunken guest list. The President’s Secretariat has had to prune the invitation list by over a 1000 to accommodate guests.
