The president of the Bengal Christian Council — a religious body — urged its affiliated schools, colleges, and organisations to appeal to the heritage commission to remove their buildings from the heritage list during a rally held earlier this week.

Reverend Paritosh Canning, the council president and bishop of the Calcutta diocese of the Church of North India, addressed school principals, church heads and priests at the “peace rally” on January 20.

“Many of our church and school buildings are heritage structures. We cannot do any repair work in our buildings...whenever we want to work in our building we are disturbed,” Reverend Canning told the audience.

“We plan to write to the commission, emphasizing their responsibility to support us in maintaining our heritage building. We expect them to provide grants for necessary repair work. Unfortunately, instead of offering assistance, they’ve merely given our buildings heritage stamps. I urge all schools, colleges and churches with heritage buildings to join us in appealing to the commission to reconsider their listing as heritage structures by June,” said the president of the Bengal Christian Council.

The appeal to be exempted from being a heritage structure will have to be made individually by schools or organisations, said Raghab Naik, an executive body member of the council.

The Church of North India, Methodist Church, Baptist Church and the Assembly of God Church are some of the churches that are part of the council, affiliated with the National Council of Churches in India.

Canning and his team had earlier tried to remove the La Martiniere school buildings from the heritage list.

The commission and sections of the government thwarted that attempt after the schools’ former students raised the red flag and sought their intervention.

Members of the heritage commission had turned down the demand and requested the school not to seek delisting and “rather encourage conservation in/of their elegant heritage premises”.

The council conducted a peace and unity rally from St Paul’s Cathedral to the Gandhi Statue on Mayo Road.

In a press release issued on January 17 to announce the rally, Reverend Canning said: “It is also a matter of concern that over the years, quite a good number of churches and educational institutions in Kolkata and West Bengal have been declared as heritage structures by the commission. We are never informed about such declarations. In hindsight, while such declarations may seem to add a touch of importance and glamour to such old buildings, in practical terms they serve no purpose. While regular maintenance and renovation costs are huge, receiving grants from the commission remains a distant hope, to be precise.”

A member of the state heritage commission said that delisting was not a solution.

“Whoever is the custodian of a heritage property, either listed or not, should consider it sacrosanct. They can seek funding to maintain these properties. Funding can be in various forms, CSR (corporate social responsibility) funds, voluntary funds, or from the government. But delisting is not a solution,” said a member of the state heritage commission.