Mayor Firhad Hakim supports the proposal to declare select neighbourhoods in the city as heritage zones, as demanded by a group of heritage enthusiasts, but he is not sure about who will fund the conservation of buildings in those areas.
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) or the state government does not have the money to maintain or protect a heritage zone,the mayor told The Telegraph on Monday.
The civic body’s primary source of income is property tax but it is not adequate to fund conservation of heritage zones, he said.
Hakim will write to the owners of buildings in BBD Bag, one of the zones that the heritage enthusiasts want to be declared as a heritage zone, so they pay attention to the upkeep of the structures.
A group of Kolkatans and others with roots in the city had last week written to chief minister Mamata Banerjee requesting her to declare certain areas heritage zones or precincts to ensure extra protection for those places and prevent their gradual fading away.
The letter said BBD Bag and College Square in central Kolkata and Hindustan Park, Lake Temple Road and Dover Lane in the south be declared as heritage precincts.
Hakim said he did nothave any discussion aboutthe letter with the chief minister.
“I support the proposal to declare certain areas in the city as heritage zones. I would love to do that. But who will fund the upkeep of the buildings in those areas?” he said.
“The KMC or the state government is not in a position to do that. We do not have the money to look after the maintenance of heritage buildings.”
The mayor said some of the buildings that have been declared as heritage structures are in a dilapidated condition. Parts of those structures can collapse any day.
A KMC official said the owners of many heritage structures approach the civic body saying they are notable to maintain the properties, whose repair is way costlier than the repair of a new building.
A heritage precinct is different from a heritage structure, which can be an individual building. A heritage zone or precinct is a neighbourhood that has multiple buildings with architectural significance or historical importance. Together those buildings lend a character to the place. Their demolition changes that character.
The signatories of the letter to the chief minister included authors Amitav Ghosh and Amit Chaudhuri; academics Sukanta Chaudhuri,Supriya Chaudhuri, Partha Mitter, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Tapati Guha Thakurta and Pranab Bardhan; filmmaker Aparna Sen; and activists Bonani Kakkar and Pradeep Kakkar.
A conservation architect said the KMC or the state government did not have to fund the conservation of structures in a heritage precinct. They need to make bylaws for the zone and offer incentives to property owners so that the area remains largely unchanged.
“A heritage precinct usually has separate bylaws. There are restrictions on how a new building coming up in that zone will look. They should never be copies of old buildings, but the new ones have to be contextual with the heritage zone,” said the architect.
“There are restrictions on the height and facade of the new buildings. The municipal corporation has to offer incentives to the owners of properties in a heritage zone to preserve the structures.”
The letter sent to the chief minister said the fact that “Kolkata, which claims to be the nerve-centre of the history of Indian modernity, still has no heritage precincts while Mumbai, Delhi, Puducherry, Ahmedabad, and other cities do is a matter of perplexity”.
“The precincts in these cities have been the focus of worldwide attention; the absence of precincts in ours must be of concern to you (the chief minister), given the pride you take in Bengal’s secular modernity.”