Quest for Heritage City: Fresh survey of properties to begin soon in Ahmedabad

Heritage Conservation Committee chairman P K Ghosh said the present list was restricted to walled city,and therefore it did not give a full picture of a number of heritage properties like Dariakhan Tomb,outside walled city areas.

The new survey will include properties located not only in the new municipal limits but in the entire area in the jurisdiction of Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority,he said.

Ghosh,also a former municipal commissioner of Ahmedabad,said the existing list of properties,more than 12,500,will be pruned for reasons of age,vagaries of time,impact of earthquake and upgradation. On the other hand,new heritage buildings will be included in the list to make the city more visible on the world heritage map,he said.

A proposal for carrying out a fresh survey has been cleared by the Heritage Conservation Committee and now it is before the standing committee for execution details,said an AMC official.

AMC commissioner Dr Guruprasad Mohapatra has said the new survey will ensure that no heritage building is left out of the new list.

As per the survey conducted from March 2000 to May 2001,the existing heritage properties are classified into three grades in accordance with their importance. They fall in Grade I,Grade IIA and Grade IIB. Under Grade I,there are 458 properties while Grade II has 1,222 properties and Grade IIB has 10,822 properties. All this will change after the new survey.

The AMC,meanwhile,has announced that no development or redevelopment,including demolition of any listed heritage building,will be allowed except with the written permission of the competent authority (municipal commissioner),issued on the advice of the Heritage Conservation Committee. A violation will be dealt with strictly under the provisions of the General Development Control Regulations,it has said.