The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) wants the old buildings in the BBD Bag area to be repaired and illuminated from outside and kept in a condition that befits the heritage tag should the civic body decide to bestow it on the zone.
The KMC will write to the owners of the buildings, government as well as private, to maintain them properly, mayor Firhad Hakim said.
A letter containing the request and addressed to the owners of the buildings in the BBD Bag area has been drafted and will be dispatched soon, said an official of the civic body.
Hakim said on Sunday that officially declaring the area as a “heritage zone” would mean nothing if the structures and the place are not maintained properly.
“It will be ridiculous if we declare BBD Bag as a heritage zone and the buildings are maintained poorly. We have to first ensure that the place looks grand and beautiful,” the mayor told The Telegraph.
Several Kolkatans, some of whom live in the city and some settled elsewhere, had written to chief minister Mamata Banerjee in May with the appeal that select parts of the city be declared as heritage precincts to ensure extra protection for these places and prevent their gradual fading away.
The letter proposed that the government declare BBD Bag and College Square in central Kolkata and “Hindustan Park/Lake Temple Road/Dover Lane” in south Kolkata as heritage precincts.
“We will see how they (building owners) respond to the letter. The government or the KMC is not in a position to spend money on the maintenance of these buildings. Their owners have to take the responsibility. If they need other kinds of support, we may extend that,” Hakim said.
The mayor said he has plans to write to the owners of buildings on College Street with a similar request. “Let me first see what can be done in BBD Bag. We can next take a similar initiative for College Square,” he said.
Sources in the KMC said the mayor wants all structures surrounding Lal Dighi, the water body in the middle of BBD Bag, to be well maintained and illuminated from outside. The buildings around Lal Dighi include Writers’ Buildings, Telephone Bhavan, GPO, Stephen House, Currency Building and Hong Kong House.
A heritage precinct or zone is different from a heritage structure, which can be an individual building. A heritage zone or precinct is an area that has multiple buildings with architectural significance or historical importance.
The buildings may not be on the list of heritage structures but together they lend a character to the place. Their demolition and replacement by modern buildings would change the character of the place and, by extension, the city.
The signatories to the letter to the chief minister include authors Amitav Ghosh and Amit Chaudhuri; academics Sukanta Chaudhuri, Supriya Chaudhuri, Partha Mitter, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Tapati Guha Thakurta; filmmaker Aparna Sen; and activists Bonani Kakkar and Pradeep Kakkar.
“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 letter reads.
“The precincts in these cities have been the focus of worldwide attention; the absence of precincts in ours must be of concern to you, given the pride you take in Bengal’s secular modernity,” it says.
Hakim also wrote to the Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC) requesting the agency to design the BBD Bag station of East-West Metro in accordance with the heritage value of the area.
“They have written back saying they were aware of the heritage value of BBD Bag and have designed the station accordingly,” he said.
KMRC is the implementing agency of the East-West Metro project.