Sewage issue & ‘attempt to alter heritage structure’: Residents protest plan to close Walled City door

Residents argued that the ‘darwaza’ had been there for centuries and demanded that the officials show documents for closing it. After protests by the residents, officials left the place, but they said they will wall up the darwaza with the help of police.

Rubina Shaikh, a resident whose husband is a cobbler near Teen Darwaza, the main Gate of Bhadra Fort, told The Indian Express, “The AMC officials came today (Friday) morning and said they were going to close the darwaza. All of us protested and asked them to show us the papers authorising it. After arguments, they left, but they warned us that they would return with police.”

According to residents, the real problem is not just access to the other side. The real issues, they said, are the overflowing sewage in the congested neighbourhood, the attempt to alter the heritage structure (City Wall) and denying them access to the ‘heritage garden’ being built on the other side, which is literally in their backyard.

The section outside the City Walls from Nehru bridge to Ellisbridge – between the wall and the Sabarmati riverfront road – is being developed as a heritage garden.

Residents inside the walled city say that they have complained umpteen times to the municipal corporation regarding the sewage problem. Officials carry out some repair works now and then, but the situation is back to square one after a while. Vector-borne diseases are rampant in their settlement due to the problem, they said.

Farzana Anwar Shaikh, a widow, who lives with her 15-year-old daughter Suhana, in the first house inside the ‘darwaza’, said their house in the low-lying area often gets flooded with sewagewater, which trickles down to the under-construction heritage garden through the darwaza .

Showing the last manhole, just 15 feet from the darwaza, Wasim Shaikh, a mechanic, says “this overflows every single day”.

Shaikh lives in an interior, higher level lane of Chand Shaid Dargah Na Chhapra area. From there too, waste water flows to the last manhole, says Rubina Shahnawaz Shaikh.

Since the beginning of October, swage line work has been underway. Residents fear that closing the darwaza, without finding a solution to the sewage problem, will lead to accumulation of sewage at their doorstep.

Sameera Saddam Shaikh, another resident, said, “The workers digging the sewage line told us they are finding it hard to create a level (reverse gradient) to stop the sewage overflow. If they close the ‘darwaza’, all the sewage will get filled up here.”

On September 7, Munaf Ahmed, a heritage activist, had filed an online complaint with the AMC, raising both the issues – lack of hygiene inside the settlement as well as the impending plans to make “drastic changes” to the heritage site.

He said, “The darwaza is part of the City Walls, a World Heritage site. How can the AMC just wall up a heritage gate?”

Officials said the decision to close the darwaza has already been made. Speaking to The Indian Express on October 7, Ramya Kumar Bhatt, the Deputy Municipal Commissioner (DyMC) of the Heritage Department, said, “The residents have another entry from the main road. The residents used to throw garbage in the sewers, and the filth is flowing into the garden, which needs to be stopped.”

Asked about the gradient of the sewage line towards the darwaza and the river, leading to the overflowing of sewage, Bhatt said, “The sewage line was updated last year and the last manhole is the topmost one. So the gradient is not towards the river now. They are putting waste inside the manhole, leading to problems.”

The doorway has been in public use for centuries. The ‘darwaza’ is not a separate structure, but a part of the City Wall, part of the walled city of Ahmadabad built by Sultan Ahmed Shah I in the year 1411.

Begumbanu Shaikh (47), a resident, said that the riverbed encroachments were demolished to make way for the Sabarmati Riverfront, the construction of which began in 2005.

“Before 2010, we used to access the river through the gate. The use of the route has been restricted after the slum was demolished to make way for the riverfront development. Still we use the door to access the other side,” Shaikh said.

Asked if the AMC’s plans wouldn’t alter the structure of the heritage structure, Bhatt said, “It is not a gate, but just an old river access point and it has no name. We need to stop unauthorised access for people and the flow of sewage water to the garden, being built by the UNM Foundation… It is not a listed darwaza, but only a part of the wall. And there are other access points for people to the riverfront.”

Unnamed darwaza

While ‘Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: Volume IV: Ahmedabad’ published in July 1879 mentions roughly the same location as ‘Baradari Darwaza’, several historians The Indian Express spoke to said that this could refer to a pavilion type structure that no longer exists. Meanwhile, the name “Baradari” is also inconsistent with other sources such as the 1938 ‘A History of Gujarat’ by Professor MS Commissariat, who, while citing the Mirat-i-Ahmadi, mentions Daricha Bagh and Khirki as two passageways between the Khanpur and Rakhad Darwazas. There is, thus, no concrete evidence for the name of the particular darwaza of the city wall.

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