In a two-part ceremony that lasted over five hours, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the new Parliament building on Sunday, with 21 Opposition parties boycotting the function and the police forcibly detaining women wrestlers as they tried marching to Parliament to demand justice, and evicting them from their protest site at Jantar Mantar.
In the morning session, Modi performed “Ganapathi Homam”, prostrated before the Sengol, which he later said symbolised not just the transfer of power but service and nationalism in the Chola empire, and carried the golden sceptre in a procession, accompanied by the tunes of “nadaswaram” and Vedic chants by priests from Karnataka’s Sringeri Math to the new Lok Sabha chamber.