NEW DELHI: Under pressure to speed up the process of notifying heritage bylaws for the over 3,600 centrally protected monuments in the country, the culture ministry has notified four institutions as expert heritage bodies to assist in the drafting of heritage bylaws. The four institutions include Delhi’s School of Planning and Architecture and IIT-D. Till now, the only institution identified as an expert heritage body under the amended ASI Act of 2010 was Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage.

Till date, only two monument bylaws, Sher Shah Gate and Khairul Manzil, have been notified but now with more institutions involved in the process, the number is likely to move up. According to senior officials from Archaeological Survey of India, bylaws for several monuments, including Delhi’s Begumpuri Masjid, Keshi Ghat in Vrindavan, Dwarkadeesh, Sarkhej in Ahmedabad, Pataleshwar caves in Pune, Currency Building in Kolkata, churches of Goa and Farukh Nagar in Haryana are almost ready and likely to be notified in a month.

“Now that there are four more agencies notified as expert heritage bodies, the work can be divided amongst all the institutions. We will hold a meeting with all these institutions shortly and invite expression of interests from all of them. The parameters are already in place and we need to sit together to fast track the process,” ASI director general Praveen Srivastava told TOI.

While Intach has forwarded a proposal to ASI to draft bylaws for all 174 monuments in Delhi, it appears that ASI is shying away from awarding the project to it. Intach has already prepared bylaws for about 40 monuments across the country unofficially based on 13 typologies drafted by them but, surprisingly, ASI officials have said that the 13 typologies for monuments were not feasible. As per Intach’s report, the typologies cover 50 monuments across the country in all types of situations like urban and rural settings and living monuments and, in this report, Intach had said, that once approved, the 13 typologies could serve as case studies. The report on monument typologies were submitted to ASI about three years ago but now the body says that it was not practical.

ASI officials defended their decision. “Each monument has distinct characteristics. The 13 categories or typologies identified by INTACH don’t lend themselves to all monuments,” reasoned a top ASI official. Intach convener A G K Menon, meanwhile, said that they had no dialogue with ASI on any project. “If there was some deficiency in our proposal we would like to know about it. But the ASI has not communicated anything to us,” he said.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/IIT-Delhi-SPA-to-help-draft-heritage-bylaws/articleshow/28810518.cms