900 UP craftsmen weave magic into carpets for new Parliament House

The magnificent new Parliament Building inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the result of the cumulative effort of hundreds of thousands of artisans, craftspeople, and workers.

Take for instance the premium carpets which are hand-knotted and weaved by 900 artisans from Uttar Pradesh who spent 10 lakh man-hours to provide the covering for the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha floors. Those weavers who have worked hard to create this are from Bhadohi and Mirzapur districts in Uttar Pradesh.

The motif used in the LS is India’s national bird, the peacock while the national flower, lotus design adorns the RS carpets. The colour in RS is basically inspired by the shade of kokum red and in the case of LS the hue is Indian agave green which is motivated from the Indian peacock plumes.

The Indian company which has laid these carpets is Obeetee Carpets which is more than 100 years old.

More than 150 carpets for each of the Houses have been crafted by the weavers. Following this they were stitched “into a single carpet in the form of a semi-circle to sync with the architecture of each of the Houses spread across 35,000 square feet of area”.

Sharing details with the media, Rudra Chatterjee, Chairman of Obeetee Carpets informed: “The weavers had to craft the carpets for halls measuring up to 17,500 square feet each. This posed a significant challenge for the design team, as they had to meticulously craft the carpet in separate pieces and seamlessly join them together, ensuring that the creative mastery of the weavers blended harmoniously to create a unified carpet that can sustain heavy footfall.”

Stressing on the intricacies of the workmanship, he added that as many as “120 knots per square inch” were woven to create the carpets. The total he said was “over 600 million knots”.

It was in 2020 this project commenced with the weaving starting from September 2021 and ending in May 2022. The installation of the carpet started in November 2022.