By Mohammed Kudrati
A viral post, stating that the Tata Group built India's new Parliament building for a cost of just ₹1, is false.
Further, the claim also says that the construction of the building took only 17 months, which is also not true. The 17-month mark has already been exceeded.
BOOM recieved this claim on its WhatsApp helpline (7700906588).
This is also viral on social media.
This post comes days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the new Parliament site for an inspection.
FactCheck
BOOM sifted through publicly available information to ascertain that the new Parliament building was not constructed for free or for a nominal sum of Rs 1.
Officially, the arm of the Tata Group that won the tender was Tata Projects Limited, which bid ₹861.91 crores. Reports suggest they outbid construction major Larsen and Toubro (L&T) for the contract.
The bid amount and the tender details have been shared by the government to Lok Sabha through this reply here given in September 2020.
This was further elaborated on in another reply given to Lok Sabha in December 2021. It can be read here.
Further, a source based story done by NDTV suggests that the official cost of the project has shot up to ₹1,250 crores from the originally budgeted ₹971 crores. The hike was reported as a time when Tata Projects Limited had already completed 40% of the work.
"The new parliament building, the highlight of the government's flagship Central Vista project, will cost another ₹ 282 crore, sources said. The 29 per cent hike over the budgeted cost of ₹ 977 crore comes more than a year after the groundbreaking ceremony, which took place in December 2020. Forty per cent of the work is completed by Tata Projects, which is executing the project", NDTVreported in January 2020.
Further, while the annual reports of Tata Projects does mention that they have undertaken the project to build the new Parliament building, nothing within the report says that they are doing it for just ₹1. All of their annual reports can be found here.
Did the project only take 17 months?
The foundation stone of the project was laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on December 10, 2020. This can officially be read with the Press Information Bureau here.
The initial completion date of October 2022 as mentioned in the reply above - has been overshot, as proceedings of Parliament are still taking place in the old Parliament building. The Budget Session of 2022 was concluded with proceedings taking place as usual. This can be seen here.
Even if the completion date of October 2022 had been adhered to, it would have been a period of 22 months since the foundation of the building was laid.
However, reports suggest that the visit conducted by Modi ties into the fact that the construction is near completion and will be inaugurated soon.
The Tata Group and Ratan Tata are often targets of fake claims that twist and appropriate their name to spread messages and claims in a positive light that may not be true,
Also Read: Fake Quote Claims Ratan Tata Asked For Alcohol Sale To Be Linked To Aadhaar Card
