NEW DELHI: What was once unveiled with great solemnity as a British-era phansi-ghar (gallows chamber) inside the Delhi Assembly has now been revealed to be what it always was... a tiffin room.
Back in 2022, then Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had inaugurated the room with solemn nods to India’s freedom struggle. A plaque dated August 9, 1942, was installed. Visitors were told this was a place of blood and sacrifice, where the British hung revolutionaries.
Fast forward to this week, Speaker Vijender Gupta decided to do a little fact-checking. He was armed with a 2011 architectural map. Gupta stood in the House and declared, “No gallows ever stood there, nor does one exist now.” That rope contraption? A dumbwaiter. That ominous-looking trapdoor? Just a wooden lift for transporting food.
In short: Not a place of execution. Just a glorified food elevator.
It is a matter of record that a plaque has been installed there, bearing the date August 9, 1942, and it was inaugurated as a tourist attraction, with the claim that a gallows once existed there. Gupta explained, “The room was a tiffin room. That’s not a gallows—that’s where your snacks came up.”
And like that, the phansi-ghar became a parantha-ghar.
The BJP was quick to pounce, accusing the former AAP government of misleading the public and turning a food service nook into a freedom struggle museum. They demanded an apology from Kejriwal.
In response, AAP’s Jarnail Singh whipped out a ChatGPT response to back the gallows theory, prompting more confusion than clarity. ChatGPT, naturally, had quoted a former Speaker who also once called it an execution chamber. To which BJP’s Parvesh Verma said: “Even ChatGPT is confused.”
LoP Atishi wondered aloud why the Assembly was debating trapdoors and tiffin lifts when Delhi was battling real problems. Her point was drowned in a sea of shouting across the benches.
As the two sides squabbled, a visiting delegation from the British Parliament sat watching. One can only imagine what they were thinking.
Gupta went on to debunk another popular legend: the mysterious tunnel from the Assembly to the Red Fort. No such thing, he said. Just good old-fashioned ventilation. “It’s called ducting,” he explained. “They used to leave space underground to let air pass. Even Parliament has it.”