HYDERABAD: Prominent heritage experts from the city, while pointing out that the Unesco Asia-Pacific awards that the state received recently had increased the government’s responsibility to conserve heritage sites with appropriate technically sound measures, they underscored the importance of planning expertise and procedural consultations while going about the restoration works.
P. Anuradha Reddy, co-convener of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (Intach), told Deccan Chronicle, “Due procedures must be followed in the restoration, reconstruction, renovation and conservation work of all the institutional properties, which are in the custody of the government. Sadly, procedures are not being followed in many ongoing projects and we see erroneous irreversible changes to many structures, damaging their original glory, which actually earn it the heritage tag”.
Institutional properties include public buildings like universities and historic sites, which by themselves stand as symbols of history and heritage.
Many experts specified the procedures that needed to be followed, which were
also recommended by Unesco for any heritage site. They include a detailed
project report (DPR), expression of interest for tendering heritage projects, peer review at every step of the process, a thorough background check of the earlier work done by an architect or engineer and operation maintenance on the completion of the restoration work.
Many of them said that inter-departmental interference of civic authorities
plays spoilsport. To drive home the point, they cited the instance of GHMC
undertaking repair work at Shaikpet Sarai, which comes under the purview of
Architectural Survey of India (ASI).
Architect and structural engineer S.P. Anchuri, who has undertaken inspection of many heritage structures, while underlining the uniqueness of each structure, said that there should be a decentralised approach by a team of experts with cut out tasks like material scientists, conservation architects and structural engineers, who can collectively cater to the precise requirements of restoration.
Anchuri stressed that the operational maintenance of the structures once the
restoration work was completed was crucial.
“Conditional Assessment Report (CAR) is important post-restoration work. We
have seen in many cases that a huge sum of money is spent on either restoration or repair work of heritage buildings but post-restoration maintenance is ignored completely killing the very purpose of the restoration work”.
Experts further said that each heritage site had the potential to win a Unesco tag, which, once achieved, can attract tourism and employment on a large scale and bolster the state’s economy.
