NEW DELHI: The fifth floor of NITI Aayog is making waves in bureaucratic circles. Amitabh Kant, the CEO of the think tank, along with his key aides, checked into the fifth floor—whose renovation cost Rs 9.26 crore—early this year.
Said to be a workplace for “New India”, which has no parallel even in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), Rs 34 lakh was spent on greening the office space alone, with exotic indoor plants dotting the place. But Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar and the four members—
V K Saraswat, Ramesh Chand, Bibek Debroy and V K Paul—are still holed up in their modest offices on the first floor.
NITI Aayog, in response to a Right to Information (RTI) query filed by this newspaper, admitted a sum of Rs 8.4 crore was allocated for renovation, refurbishment and re-development of the building’s fifth floor. “Besides, a sum of `34 lakh was approved for horticulture; Rs 52 lakh has been incurred on networking and telephone cabling,” the RTI reply stated.
A senior official of the think tank said, “The fifth-floor office of the CEO is a departure from government buildings in the national capital. It gives the impression to visiting dignitaries from abroad that India too is changing and could boast of the best when it comes to office space.”
The 40,000 sq. ft new office space contains cabins, conference and meeting rooms patterned on corporate buildings, with see-through glass partitions, along with 196 exotic indoor plants. It has views of Parliament, South and North Block, and Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Besides the Niti CEO, the MD of Atal Innovation Mission and DG of Data Management and Evaluation Office are placed on the fifth floor. Young professionals and consultants too have got spots among the 165 workstations in the new office.