Panel mooted for conserving heritage structures

The state government has proposed a Heritage Conservation Committee to ensure protection of heritage buildings in Bengaluru, a move conservationists are cheering.

The proposal is part of the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Common Building Bye-Laws 2017, which the state government is finalising.

The 13-member committee, proposed to be headed by the BBMP commissioner, will be tasked with identifying and listing out heritage sites, structures and precincts (area) that need conservation, regulation and management. More importantly, the committee will vet all projects that may impact a heritage structure.

The committee will also have structural engineers, architects, historians, artists, a representative of the Indian Heritage Cities Network among others.

“If the regulation was in effect, the Murphy Town library would not have been razed,” Town and Country Planning director L Shashikumar said. The 104-year-old library was demolished recently to make way for an Indira Canteen.

“These regulations will help authorities identify and preserve local importance
of heritage structures,” he added.

The committee will identify heritage sites based on 12 criteria that include architectural, historical and cultural reasons, periodicity, relevance to social or economic history, association with well-known persons or events and so on. The committee will also classify heritage structures into grades I, II and III.

“There are three types of heritage buildings - those declared by the Archaeological Survey of India, those declared by the State Archaeology Department and the local monuments that are not at all listed. These regulations will help local authorities identify and grade them,” town planning expert Shantappa Honnur said. “This will be a road map for heritage conservation.”

The bye-laws also make provision for a Heritage Fund that may be used to take up repairs of heritage buildings.

Bengaluru’s track record in heritage conservation is dismal. In 1985, the city had 823 iconic heritage buildings, according to the first such inventory the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (Intach) prepared for the erstwhile Bangalore Urban Arts Commission. When Intach revisited the inventory last year, the number had reduced to 354.

“The Committee and grading of heritage buildings have been long pending and we are happy that the government is heading in this direction,” former Intach convenor Sathya Prakash Varanashi said.

“The only worry is that operational mechanisms for grading and listing have to be worked out. It shouldn’t become another ward committee fraught with lack of clarity,” he opined.