The national flag was raised at the new Parliament building on Sunday, the day before the start of the Special Session of Parliament, by Vice President and Chairman of the Rajya Sabha Jagdeep Dhankhar. Parliamentary proceedings during the Special Session will be held in the nearby new building instead of the older one, beginning on Monday.
On top of the new Parliament building’s “Gaja Dwar,” Dhankhar raised the flag. Om Birla, the speaker of the Lok Sabha, was also present. The Rajya Sabha Chairman called it a historic moment and said that epochal change is taking place in the nation. “This is a historic occasion. India is going through a historic change. The mighty power and contribution of Bharat are fully acknowledged by the world. We are living in a time of advancement and accomplishments that we never could have imagined,” Dhankhar said following the ceremony.
At the ceremony to raise the flag, Congress MPs Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and Pramod Tiwari, as well as Union Ministers V Muraleedharan, Piyush Goyal, and Arjun Ram Meghwal, were also present. Mallikarjun Kharge, president of the Congress and leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, announced on Saturday that he would be unable to attend the flag-raising ceremony and expressed disappointment at receiving the invitation “quite late.” He stated in a letter to Rajya Sabha Secretary General PC Mody that he only received the invitation to the event late on September 15 in the evening.