Know about the 17 Monuments Could now Lose Their “National Importance” Label

The Ministry of Culture has recommended removing 17 monuments off the list of nationally significant monuments.

The list is available for public comment and ideas through May 8th. These are dispersed over multiple states, from Delhi’s Barakhamba Cemetery to Lakhimpur, Arunachal Pradesh, where there is a copper shrine.

An inscription in the fort of Bachhaun in the Satna district of Madhya Pradesh; a 12th-century temple in the Baran locality of Kota district of Rajasthan; a Kos Minar in the Mujessar village of Gurugram; and another one in Shahabad in Karnal; a fort in the Nagar locality of Jaipur; and Dwarahat Kutumbari in the Almora district of Uttarakhand are among the monuments on the list.

Uttar Pradesh is home to a group of eight monuments that are being suggested for removal from the list.

These include, among other places, Gunner Burkill’s Tomb at Rangoon in Jhansi, cemeteries and tombs in Lucknow, the Telia Nala Buddhist ruins that are a part of an abandoned settlement in Varanasi, and a banyan grove that was said to be extremely old and includes remnants of ancient buildings in Ghazipur.

The PM emphasized in a working paper the pressing need to rationalize the Archaeological Survey of India’s list of sites of national interest and requested that the agency develop “substantive criteria and a detailed procedure for declaring monuments to be of national importance.”