Heritage regulations to protect and maintain the large number of heritage structures and sites spread across Karnataka will be incorporated in the Town and Urban Planning Act shortly, B R Jayaramaraje Urs, Kannada, culture and information secretary, government of Karnataka said in Mysore.
He was inaugurating a one-day workshop/seminar on heritage concept attended by 65 officials from six heritage places of Mysore, Srirangapatna, Gulbarga, Bidar, Kittur and Bijapur. Commissioners and engineers of municipal bodies, urban development authorities and public works department attended.
The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Reconstruction Mission giving a heritage to Mysore, conservation of monuments and heritage sites, not necessarily in Mysore but spread across Karnataka, has gained importance.
In order to educate and impress upon the officials who have the responsibility of taking care of these monuments, the department of archaeology, museums and heritage, Bangalore, has initiated training programmes and the workshop was one such effort.
Emphasising the importance of preserving the rich cultural heritage, tangible and intangible, Urs said incorporation of heritage regulations in the Act would help achieve this task.
Apart from helping in preserving heritage structures, the regulations would assist in preserving rich cultural heritage like puppetry, Yakshagana (traditional dance-drama) and other similar arts for posterity.
He called upon the attending officials to ensure care to protect monuments while undertaking development works, like widening of roads, building bridges and laying drainages. Hampi’s Conservation Architect Sharat Chandra explained the ongoing conservation work in Hampi, the erstwhile Vijayanagar capital which has a large number of historic monuments spread across in Bellary district.
He suggested conservation measures like mapping, reporting etc. in structural monuments.
Mysore’s Regional Conservation Laboratory chief B V Kharbade narrated the difficulties they are facing in protecting historic monuments and buildings and the way the laboratory had initiated ways to tackle them.
Ravi Gundu Rao explained measures taken to conserve and preserve structures of the British era.
Following the successful workshop, the department has planned to educate students and teachers in colleges on the importance of historic monuments and records.
Two such one-day workshops will be conducted on September 7 at Maddur in Mandya district and on September 11 at T Narasipur in Mysore district, deputy director of archaeology, museums and heritage G V Gayathri told Business Standard.
Continuing its efforts in collecting archival material, the Archives in Mysore has recently acquired copies of old wedding invitations and collections of C J Devanath, including old records and photographs relating to Mysore.
