Times of India: Ahmedabad: Wednesday, July 04, 2018.
The Walled
City may soon lose chunks of its stunning heritage because of the ravages of
construction and commercial pressures.
Therefore,
stringent conservation laws must be implemented immediately.
The danger to
the Walled City is clear and present. At Khadia Crossroads, in Khatri pol, a
building notified as a listed heritage property was torn down to give way to a
commercial structure.
Way back on
May 16, 2016, the estate department of the civic body had sought an opinion
from the heritage cell whether the agglomerated property cited as 530 consisting
of three buildings of which one bore the city survey number 531 was a heritage
structure.
The heritage
cell replied on December 27, 2016, saying that the building bearing the city
survey 531 was listed as number AMC/TDO/587 in the heritage notification and
was notified.
But despite
this information, on January 5 this year, the deputy town development officer
of the central zone issued “commencement letter” allowing the demolition of the
agglomerated building and nearby structures to be replaced by a 9.8 metre
commercial building.
Other
documents show that the demolition was approved by the high powered National
Monument Authority (NMA) in its 159th meeting held on September 4 last year. In
fact, the NMA allowed the building height to be raised to 17.8 metres.
“I was
stunned to discover how the new heritage regulations were manipulated to allow
the illegal construction,” said Kalupur resident Pankaj Bhatt who had sought
details under the RTI Act.
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