New Delhi: The Centre has finalised a plan to raze one of the greatest architectural monuments of the British Raj and rebuild 480 structures in the Lutyens' bungalow zone, home to some of the most influential addresses in the country.
The residential heart of New Delhi, the Indian capital built by the British in the 1920s and 1930s, is known as Lutyens's Bungalow Zone after Sir Edwin Lutyens.
Inspired by the ideas of Ebenezer Howard and Lutyens' own work in Hampstead Garden Suburb, it consists of many broad boulevards lined with tall, mature trees.
Behind low brick walls and screening hedges are the plain, handsome, whitewashed bungalows, set amid rolling lawns and herbaceous borders, which housed the colonial administrators.
Vice-president Hamid Ansari, all cabinet ministers, opposition leaders including BJP's LK Advani, former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee, senior judges, army officers, bureaucrats and lawmakers are among the occupants of these bungalows.
The issue came up for review after an increase in complaints from occupants about seepage, cracks in the walls and arches, rundown facades and other deterioration of the structures.
