At Museum Of PMs In Delhi, Technology To Let Visitors "Meet" Them

It will be one of the most modern museums in the world.

Delhi's Teen Murti Estate, the official residence of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru that houses a museum and library in his memory, will soon have a second museum. This one, for all the other 15 prime ministers as well, a senior official said after a meeting of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, or NMML, that occupies the estate.

"It will be one of the most modern museums in the world," said Shakti Sinha, the retired bureaucrat who is driving the project to build the museum for PMs.

The project is viewed suspiciously by the Congress that believes the move to build a museum for all prime ministers at Teen Murti rather than a new location is an effort to erode Jawaharlal Nehru's legacy.

At a meeting chaired by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday to change the NMML bylaws, Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Jairam Ramesh are learnt to have expressed their misgivings about the project.

Rajnath Singh is learnt to have responded that there was no question of diluting his legacy and no one can do that as the contribution of country's first prime minister was unparalleled. Mr Kharge later told reporters that a decision had been deferred.

The museum is set to be the first in the country to introduce the augmented reality technology.

Mr Sinha said they would go by the advice of architects to locate the museum in the 25-acre Teen Murti Estate. There is adequate space, he said, pointing that the Nehru museum only occupied about half-an-acre.

"It shall be technologically modern museum... We shall use the best technology available," the NMML director said about the Rs 280-crore project.

Mr Sinha, a retired bureaucrat who was once an aide to former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee, was brought in as NMML director in 2016 after historian Mahesh Rangarajan was forced to resign a year earlier.

He did not elaborate about the technology to be used.

But the government wants the museum to be the first in the country to introduce the augmented reality technology.

According to an NMML official document, the government is looking for companies that can create a virtual interface using graphics, animations or videos of prime ministers. This technology would enable people to meet and greet the prime minister of their choice in a real environment, allow visitors to interact and visualise themselves in the augmented display.

"The rendition of the Prime Ministers in life scale, coming close to reality, is of essence," the document says, adding that it should be able to store this moment as a photograph or sent as an email.