HYDERABAD: In an attempt to institutionalise conservation of heritage, the State government is working towards forming an ‘informal’ advisory committee to support district-level and State-level heritage bodies, which are yet to become functional under the Telangana Heritage Law.
According to officials, the advisory panel will comprise individuals from the heritage conservation ecosystem, including heritage conservation, landscape design, lighting, civil works and groundwater resource planning, and it will function as a parallel committee, advising the District Heritage Committee (DHC) or the Greater Hyderabad Heritage Committee (GHHC).
It is the non-implementation of sections of the 2017 Heritage Law that has forced the government to work towards forming this ‘informal’ body.
Speaking to Express, Principal Secretary of the Municipal Administration and Urban Development
(MA&UD) Arvind Kumar, said, “Conservation of heritage has essentially been an individual undertaking. This committee would help in making it institutional.” On Monday, Kumar had a meeting with Hyderabad Heritage Trust, an NGO.
After the meeting, the NGO on their Facebook post stated, “He was emphatic in stating that any government initiative at reviving heritage must necessarily be a people’s movement, something I wholeheartedly endorse and support. He agreed that our approach to heritage revival must transcend individuals and be institutionalised as a public participation model,” the NGO added.
Talking about other steps in this regard, Kumar said that other than the Hyderabad Heritage Trust, he also had meetings with Hyderabad Urban Lab Director Anant Mariganti and Mir Khan, a representative of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Committee, among others.