When UNESCO deferred the World Heritage City status for Ahmedabad, hopes remained high for the civic body. They immediately announced that they would resolve the queries raised by UNESCO in the heritage dossier.
However, now it seems the city may actually lose the chance this time too.
The UNESCO team had expressed concern over constructions of multi-storeyed buildings in the walled city, which houses most of the heritage structures mentioned in the dossier. In reply, AMC said that the construction was done before they prepared the dossier.
The team has also sought a detailed map of the houses in pols. To this, the heritage department officials have said that they have submitted whatever they had. “They have asked for a map of houses in each pol. What we haven’t sent, we shall send across soon. They had also asked us about construction of multi-storey buildings in the walled city area. Now we can’t do anything about the something that has already been built,” argued PK Vasudevan Nair, director of heritage department, AMC.
“Another of their concerns is the buffer area between the river and the walled city. We have mentioned in our response that we shall conserve that area. We are also committed to proper management and conservation of the areas which are mentioned in the heritage list of AMC,” added Nair.
The civic body has been hoping to convert the ‘deferred’ status, currently given to Ahmedabad’s claim by UNESCO, to ‘referred’. The final announcement of heritage cities will be made in Poland in July this year.
“A meeting will be held this month in Paris. It is likely that in that meeting officials of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and central government’s representatives will put forth our nomination,” said Nair.
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