THE unequivocal verdict of Delhi High Court granting full protection to continuance of the construction work for New Delhi’s ambitious project Central Vista as “essential” and imposition of a fine of Rs. one lakh on the petitioners for having filed a “motivated plea”, is actually a tight slap on the face of those who sought not just to criticise the project as a funds-guzzler, but also to malign Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi’s image as a national leader. The petition to the High Court was part of the campaign against the Central Vista -- which Opposition had described very wrongly as the Prime Minister’s palatial residence. The honourable Delhi High Court has shown all the detractors their own place. The Central Vista project has a new ex-official residence for Prime Minister only as a small part. The other segments of the massive project will house countless Government departments and offices for which the Government is currently paying massive rental bills every month. Moreover, most of those offices are scattered all over the national capital, adding only to administrative inconvenience to the Government as well as to the common people. All those problems will get sorted out once the Central Vista project is complete.

 

The honourable Delhi high Court has taken an appropriate cognisance of all these details, and has rejected the petition as a negatively motivated exercise. The opposition to Central Vista project, however, indicates something deeper as well. It demonstrates how certain elements in the country are positioned against Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi and are all the time willing to heap abuses on him and thrust lies upon the nation. They started calling the Central Vista “Prime Minister’s palatial mansion” in an obvious attempt to mislead unsuspecting common people to believe that Mr. Narendra Modi was trying to make for himself a futuristic residence even as the nation reels under the coronavirus pandemic and is running short of funds to manage healthcare. All this is nothing but a vicious, politically-driven propaganda on which truth is the first and the only victim.

 

The attempt is somehow to malign the image of the Prime Minister so that he loses his popularity rating and finds it difficult to face the next general elections in 2024. Of course, everything is acceptable in politics. Despite this, the common people are aghast that the political opponents of Mr. Narendra Modi are losing sight of a stark reality that they are hurting the interest of the nation as well as they mount senseless attacks on the Prime Minister. The opposition to Central Vista also brought to fore another fact -- that the Opposition has run out of ideas to oppose the man at the helm and his Government. So blinded have they become due to their political rage that they do not realise that the Central Vista project was first thought of much earlier than Mr. Modi started his prime ministerial regime in 2014. They do not also realise that the current Parliament Complex has grown too old to house India’s highest democratic institution for long. The edifice would certainly continue to add grace to the capital’s persona all right, but the function for which it was originally built a hundred years ago will shift to a more suitable place to accommodate expanded scope of work and people’s representation. However, pushed by a sense of hatred for Mr. Narendra Modi, the people in Opposition are trying to devise newer ways of expressing their disapproval of the man. That this effort is leading nowhere, is a reality which they wish to ignore deliberately.

 

For, if they pay heed to that truth, they will have no activity by way of which to express their hostility towards the Prime Minister. The honourable Delhi High Court read all this in the petition and fined the petitioner for bringing to the court a “motivated” case with a questionable agenda. This will keep happening everywhere -- the rap on the knuckle of the Opposition. Despite that, it is unlikely that they will see sense and start mending their ways so that the common people take them seriously. This is the actual problem -- the obliviousness of the Opposition to the fact that the common people do not take them seriously, particularly when their effort is personalised against Mr. Narendra Modi.