BHUBANESWAR: The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) on Monday rubbished the claims of the Odisha Government that original stones from the walls of Sun Temple at Konark have been removed and replaced with plain ones.
“Not even a single piece of stone has been removed from any portion of the surviving structural remains of the temple. Also no replacement of stone has been done for conservation, repair or any other purpose in the last one and half decades,” said ASI Superintendent for Bhubaneswar Circle Arun Mallick.
The ASI clarification comes a day after Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik shot off a letter to Union Culture Minister on Sunday seeking a probe into allegations of removal of artistic stones from the historical monument and its poor maintenance by ASI in a section of media. Mallick, though, junked the reports and said the allegations are totally baseless. Before approaching the Centre, the State should have taken our view on the matter, he said.
He also said reports of missing giraffe plaque from the temple is false. “The giraffe plaque is in its place as was placed by original architects of the edifice. The missing portion was the Adhisthana of Jagamohana of the temple which had to be restored for structural stability as per the guidelines laid down under National Policy for Conservation 2014,” he said.
The ASI Superintendent said as per the clause 5.03 of National Conservation Policy, at no cost shall an attempt to restore an entire building be allowed as it will falsify history and compromise its authenticity. Likewise, decorative features such as wall painting, inscriptions, calligraphy and sculptures should also not be restored (to maintain originality). “Accordingly, we have only placed plain stones where there were gaps in the structure,” he said.
The national conservation body regularly follows scientific techniques for preservation of surface stone members such as curved stones and statues. We have also managed to control erosion of surface stones to a considerable extent and created a green belt as per the recommendations of the experts to protect the temple stones from saline breeze and sand blasting. Thus there wasn’t any need for replacing or removing any stone from any portion of the monument in the recent past. Nor there is any requirement for such replacement in near future,” Mallick asserted.
Stating that apprehensions created in public mind through such reports should be negated, Mallick said, the ASI is closely monitoring the structural health of the monument. The final report of ICOMOS Reactive Monitoring Mission during February 2000 had stated that neither the condition of the structure nor the deterioration of the stone elements show any considerable threat to the monument, he said, adding, the huge tubular scaffolding that were erected to facilitate structural study and investigation by experts of Central Building Research Institute (CBRI), Roorkee is just over now and the scaffolding system will be removed or reduced shortly after receipt of the final recommendation from the institute.