Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: South Block, home to all major decisions in govt for over five decades, will see PMO move out of the British-era building on Friday afternoon and shift to the newly constructed Seva Teerth. PM Narendra Modi will chair the last Cabinet meeting in South Block on that day before the inauguration of the new administrative building, which is less than a kilometre from the iconic structure on Raisina Hill. TOI has learnt that after the Cabinet meeting, Union ministers and bureaucrats will go from South Block to Sewa Teerth, which houses the PMO, cabinet secretariat, office of the NSA and India House, the new venue to host high-level delegations. Officials said the first Cabinet meeting under PM Jawaharlal Nehru was held in South Block. South Block and North Block on Raisina Hill were built in 1931. The history of PMO is traced to a small PM’s secretariat (PMS) in 1947. The first major structural change happened in 1964, after Lal Bahadur Shastri became PM, when PMS got statutory status via Allocation of Business Rules. The authority of the office increased during Indira Gandhi’s tenure and, in 1977, it was renamed PMO during Morarji Desai’s tenure. The ministries of defence and external affairs will move from South Block to multiple offices over the next few weeks.
