The project, designed on the likes of international media centres across world capitals will be able to accommodate close to 300 media persons in its state of the art conference hall and ministries including the prime ministers office are expected to address the nation from the new building after its inauguration.
In addition, the Press Information Bureau will also shift its office to the sprawling media centre. The decision to shift to a new office was taken as the current office of the PIB at Shastri Bhavan in New Delhi cannot accommodate the increasing number of media persons, according to officials of the Press Information Bureau.
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“All the ministries will address the media from the new centre, including the PMO’s office. The new facility is technologically advanced and boasts of features such as Wi-Fi and work station for media persons”, Neelam Kapur, Director General of Press Information Bureau told Business Standard.
The National Media centre, earlier named as National Press Centre was planned in 1989 and the foundation stone was laid in 2001 when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister. The project could not start until 2010 due to various reasons and the project was finally revived by Ambika Soni, when she was the minister for Information & Broadcasting.
The media centre boasts of a large conference room which can hold 300 journalists, and boasts a video wall, Wi-Fi enabled halls, and several work stations to facilitate growing media needs. PIB is also planning to store all its archives at the new facility.