BHUBANESWAR: With the Sun temple at Konark being the only site in Odisha that enjoys the World Heritage Site status, archaeologists have proposed to nominate Buddhist heritage of the state for the coveted tag.
Senior archaeologists including those from the state Archaeology, ASI and Odishan Institute of Maritime & South East Asian Studies(OIMSEAS), under the aegis of Centre for Heritage Studies, on Wednesday decided to write to the Odisha government to submit names of the cluster of Buddhist sites under the Assia hill range - Lalitgiri, Langudi, Udayagiri and Ratnagiri - for inclusion in the tentative list of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
The decision was taken after the 46th session of the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO which concluded in New Delhi on July 30. Five archaeologists from Odisha attended the session where they were asked to nominate a new site from the state for the World Heritage Site status.
“The cluster of Lalitgiri, Langudi, Udayagiri and Ratnagiri represents Odisha’s history and a unique evolving culture of 1,500 years that can also be seen today at many other sites in the country. It meets the three criteria of universal value, management plan and biodiversity for being identified as a heritage site,” said director of OIMSEAS and Buddhist researcher Sunil Patnaik.
He further said apart from having a universal heritage value, these four sites do not have ownership issues as they are under the custody of ASI and have enough space for conservation and management like the Sun temple at Konark. Apart from Sunil, archaeologists Jeeban Patnaik, DB Gadanayak, Susant Kar and Aswini Satapathy attended the UNESCO meet.
A tentative list is an inventory of those properties that each state intends to consider for nomination as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. As per the operational guidelines of UNESCO, 2019, it is mandatory to put any monument/site on the tentative list for one year before it is considered for the final nomination dossier. At present, there are 60 monuments/sites in India which find a place in the tentative list for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage list. These include Ekamra Kshetra in Bhubaneswar.