A building in utter disrepair on New Delhi's Chelmsford Road, metres from the New Delhi railway station, couldn't be demolished for years because it was identified as a heritage building by the Delhi Urban Art Commission. Originally called the Lady Hardinge Serai (tourist inn), the building offered a resting place for travellers and their horses. In the 1970s, the place was converted into a women's hostel.
It has also housed the Maulana Azad Education Foundation, under the Ministry of Minority Affairs. The government decided to construct a new building at the site to house a library, a hostel and also the ministries of minority affairs, and social justice and empowerment but couldn't go ahead.
Its heritage status rested on the fact that Lady Hardinge, wife of Charles Hardinge, British India's viceroy from 1910 to 1916, had stayed at the place for a night before boarding a train from the Old Delhi railway station the next morning. With the commission now giving the green signal, a modern structure is likely to come up on the plot soon.
