Around 948 monuments,buildings,open spaces,water bodies and precincts that have been painstakingly documented and proposed for heritage listing are in danger of being wiped off the cityscape while a proposal to revise the citys list of protected heritage structures gathers dust with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). Papers procured by research organisation Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) under the Right to Information Act show that for the last three and a half years,the revised heritage list has been awaiting official sanction. Experts appointed by the Heritage Conservation Society of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMR-HCS) have drawn up the revised list that expanded the existing list of 588 structures and precincts in the island city to 948. The revised list,for the first time,takes into account structures of architectural,cultural or historical value in the eastern and western suburbs of Mumbai. These include bungalows,villas and cottages in the Bandra-Andheri stretch,talaos in Chembur and temples in Ghatkopar among several other sites such as caves and forts. More importantly,the revised list makes a case for inclusion of water bodies such as Powai lake,Vihaar lake and Tulsi dam,vast open spaces such as Cross Maidan,Cooperage Grounds,Shivaji Park,Azad Maidan into the heritage list. In an attempt to save the last few vestiges of neo-classical and art deco cinema houses in Mumbai,it proposes grade II A listing for Liberty,Regal,Eros and Edward theaters. In 2005,the MMR-HCS submitted the revised list to the statutory heritage panel of the BMC,which in turn physically verified the intrinsic value of each proposed site. In July 2008,the heritage panel wrote to the Urban Development Department (UDD) asking it to either publish the list or instruct the BMC to do so. The letter said the list should be published at the earliest so as to preserve the special,collective,heritage character and value of these areas. Two months later,the UDD directed the BMC to publish the list and conduct public hearings as part of the process before notifying the list. After that,the list was relegated to cold storage. While the UDD threw the ball into BMCs court,successive municipal commissioners have not shown any interest in notifying the list, said Pankaj Joshi,executive director of UDRI. He now fears that almost 25 per cent of the proposed structures would already have fallen prey to the onslaught of development. The UDRI,along with architect Abha Narain Lambah,were responsible for the review of existing heritage list as part of the exercise. The additional listing for the island city was carried out by Neera Adarkar Associates,for western suburbs by Ahmedabad-based Heritage Initiative Archicrafts and eastern suburbs by the Designers group of architects. Heritage activists said already several valuable structures in Bandra-Khar and the proposed precinct of Parsi colony have been razed. If not notified immediately,the proposed heritage list can also be a tool for vested interests to pull down the structures and construct highrises before they are declared heritage structures. So many residential stone structures along Napean Sea Road,which were proposed for the listing,have already been demolished. Heritage once gone cant be retrieved and the entire gamut of cultural identity as well as colonial and pre-colonial architecture is lost forever, said Adarkar. While a senior UDD official,who did not want to be named,said the department is waiting for the BMC to act on it,Municipal Commissioner Subodh Kumar said he was under the impression that the matter was pending before the state government. Since the matter was first referred to the BMC in 2008,when I wasnt in charge,it wasnt in my radar. I will look into the issue now, he said.
