This story is from July 17, 2019

Telangana: ‘Fraud’ Heritage Act taken to high court

Telangana: ‘Fraud’ Heritage Act taken to high court
File photo of Irrum Manzil
HYDERABAD: Criticising the state government for bringing in Telangana Heritage Conservation Act without any list of heritage monuments and ancient structures to be protected, advocate Niroop Reddy on Tuesday described the Act as a fraud played on the Constitution.
Arguing the case of NGO, Hyderabad Zindabad, which is fighting against the proposed demolition of Irrum Manzil palace, the counsel told a bench of chief justice Raghavendra Singh Chauhan and justice Shameem Akther about a similar case happened in Karnataka where the state had proposed to demolish Karnataka high court building which was categorised as ancient structure.
The idea was to build a modern HC building in the place of the old palace that was housing the HC. Though the high court refused to interfere in the policy decision of the state, it dealt extensively with the need to protect our heritage. Both the chief minister of Karnataka and his advocate general went through the judgement, understood its spirit and decided not to demolish the HC building, the counsel said. I hope the advocate general sitting here too would rise up to the occasion and play a similar role in convincing the state regime, he said.
The Urban Areas Development Act has a provision that makes it mandatory for the state to constitute Urban Arts Commission whose job is to protect, conserve and preserve the heritage and ancient structures, Niroop said. India is a signatory to the world heritage convention (WHC) and it is the duty of the union, state and local governments to accord due respect to the resolutions of WHC.
Bringing in laws contrary to the spirit of such convention is nothing but a fraud on the constitution because this 2017 Act was lying to the people and lying to the constitution too, he said. Constitution entrusted a duty on all the governments and also the citizens to strive to protect our ancestry in all forms and this is precisely the reason why the petitioner, Pasham Yadagiri, a senior journalist, filed this plea through his NGO, the counsel explained.
The state was saying openly that it wants to de-list certain ancient buildings from the list because keeping them under protection is affecting the property rights of the owners of such buildings, hence the list, the entire list that has 162 protected and ancient structures, goes, he remarked.
The bench verified whether, in the past, both the heritage conservation committee and urban arts commission, functioned side by side. The bench sought to know from the petitioner’s counsel the power the court has to restrain the state in such matters. The counsel said the courts can intervene as the state had done away with the list of huge number of heritage structures in an arbitrary manner.
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