Heritage city, but 201 buildings including Palace wait for heritage tag

Mysore: There are as many as 201 buildings in the Heritage City including Mysore Palace which are waiting for the heritage tag.

Only one building—writer R.K. Narayan’s residence— has been declared as a heritage building by Mysore Urban Development Authority under Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act 1961. In the entire State, 1360 structures have been declared as protected monuments including 755 structures which have been declared as monuments by the state and 608 by Archaeological Survey of India.

In Mysore district, 35 structures have been declared monuments including 32 by the state and seven by ASI. In Mysore city alone Nandi statue in Chamundi hills, Welli­ngton lodge, Kote Someswara and Kodi Byra­veswara temple, Laks­hminarayana temple, Prasanna Kris­hnaswamy temple, Trin­aya­neswara temple and Vara­has­wamy temples in Mysore fort, Mah­a­lingeswara temple in Lin­gambudipalya are the only ones which are being declared as heritage monuments by State and none by ASI.

When contacted Heritage Com­missioner, Dr C. G. Betsurmath in this regard, he said, an amendment of section 13 E of Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act 1961 is being proposed to have necessary guidelines to identify heritage buildings in the State.

Several private parties are demolishing their buildings with heritage value, which has to be prevented. While the bill has already been drafted, it is currently pending at the government level, he said.
“It is proposed to develop 20 Heritage cities in the State at the cost of Rs 540 crore,” said Director Gen­eral of Administrative Tr­aining Ins­titute, Amitha Pr­asad.

She was speaking after inaugurating a two-day Heritage, Conservation and Management workshop for various Urban Local Bodies and others, at State Ins­titute for Urban Development here on Saturday.

She said, herita­ge should be an important and inte­gral component while planning for urban development. But Mysore being a heritage city, the Mysore City Corporation doesn’t have a heritage cell to act on it, she noted.

Rathi Vinay Jha, Cha­irperson of Indian Her­itage Cities Network recalling her childhood in Mysore said that, one kg of sugar was distributed by the royal family to each and every household in Mysore then, when the last scion of Mysore royal family, Sri­kantadatta Narasimharaja Wa­diyar was born.