Nirupama Rao in New Delhi on Tuesday. (AFP)

New Delhi, July 26: Just for you, Ma’am, but “unofficially”, of course.

The external affairs ministry today rushed to give outgoing foreign secretary Nirupama Rao a parting gift by unofficially inaugurating its incomplete new headquarters so that her name could be on a plaque at the building.

Sources said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would “soon” officially inaugurate the headquarters, Jawaharlal Nehru Bhavan.

Insiders in the ministry of external affairs (MEA) said Rao played an important role in speeding up the construction of the stately red sandstone building but would have retired before the Prime Minister found time from his busy schedule to inaugurate the building.

Rao, India’s next envoy to America, retires on July 31. “Therefore, today’s unofficial ceremony…” said a source.

It was, however, official enough for the ministry top brass to be present. Among those who attended the event apart from Rao were external affairs minister S.M. Krishna, junior foreign ministers Preneet Kaur and E. Ahamed, and foreign secretary-designate Ranjan Mathai.

The media were kept out as the ministry didn’t want cameras to capture images of an incomplete headquarters. Only state-run Doordarshan, with instructions not to show inconvenient images of the building, was allowed inside to cover the event.

Although “unofficial”, today’s ceremony meant that Rao — the first woman foreign service officer to be MEA official spokesperson and also complete a full two-year term as foreign secretary — had added another statistic to her name.

She will be remembered as the foreign secretary during whose stint the ministry ended its six-decade wait for its own headquarters. The ministry can now finally move its sundry offices in Delhi out of rented accommodations to Jawaharlal Nehru Bhavan named after India’s first external affairs minister.

Sources in the central public works department said there was “immense pressure” from the ministry to get the building ready by July-end for at least an unofficial inauguration. They said the ministry wanted to see the building completed before Rao handed over charge to Mathai.

The ministry had first conceived the plan to have its own headquarters in the 1950s. P.V. Narasimha Rao, as Prime Minister, eventually allotted the MEA 7.78 acres opposite Delhi’s National Museum on Janpath in two phases in 1992 and 1994.

After years of delay — first because of litigation and later red tape — construction eventually started in mid-2006.

“A stone’s throw from South Block, it would be one of the first government buildings in India with 100 per cent digital input and ready infrastructure for 10 GB data transfer facilities. It would also offer facilities for media briefings,” said an official.

The building has a barrier-free environment for the differently-abled. Recycled material has been used wherever possible.

Jawahar Bhavan, which has a built-up area of 60,000 square metres, is also the first “green” building constructed in the government sector in India. Officials said as much as 60 per cent of the building’s area is green, covered by locally available plants and trees. The building will use “bio-reactor technology” for water management.

The building will allow the MEA to house all its offices, now spread across several buildings in Delhi, under one roof. The ministry’s offices are located chiefly at South Block, Akbar Bhavan and Shastri Bhavan.

The ministry has committed to a parliamentary standing committee that it will move out from Akbar Bhavan and Shastri Bhavan but will keep its South Block offices where the external affairs minister, foreign secretary and key functional divisions will have their offices.

MEA old-timers said the credit for the ministry finally getting its own headquarters should also go to people who pushed the project in its initial years — Narasimha Rao, Yashwant Sinha as NDA foreign minister and, most of all, former foreign secretary Shyam Saran who revived the project in 2006.