BHUBANESWAR: The Archaeological Survey of India on Monday came up with a clarification that no engraving has been replaced with plain stones in Sun temple at Konark, Odisha’s only World Heritage Site, after tweets on monument went viral.
An uproar on Twitter over ASI’s negligence towards the upkeep of the Sun Temple began in the morning when a user posted two images of the temple, one showing the sculpted panel and the other with plain stones covering a portion of the 13th-century temple.
The pictures were captioned ‘then and now’. The pictures went viral and were shared by thousands of users on the micro-blogging site forcing ASI to release a clarification.
“The tweet regarding the replacement of sculptures with plain stones is false and misleading. The plain stonework shown in the image was done in the mid-1980s. ASI used plain stone only wherein there was no evidence left & as per ASI’s the then archaeological policy, only such portions were filled with plain stones. ASI would like to confirm that no sculpture has been replaced”, the heritage protection agency tweeted.