During its tenure the committee formulated a new set of heritage regulations and submitted them to the BMC
Mumbai : The city’s heritage conservation committee, in-charge of conservation and development of the heritage structures in Mumbai, completed its three year term on Saturday. Talking about his experience, its outgoing chairman V. Ranganathan said that the greatest challenge for Mumbai is that it has a lot to learn about conservation and maintenance of its heritage structures.
He said, “A lot needs to be done about creating awareness and expertise about conservation of our heritage structures. There are many organisations in this field like the Central and the State public works departments and private organisations which can do with more experts. That is one of the urgent tasks to be taken up by the committee that will be appointed next.”
When the Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee (MHCC) was appointed three years ago, it had a mammoth task to complete as the city had been without a heritage committee for one year. V. Ranganathan said he had a fruitful tenure and his team managed to complete a lot of pending work. “We had new cases coming to us and a lot of pendency from the previous year. We established the procedure of clearing proposals within a month after they came to us, so we got a lot of work done.”
During its tenure the MHCC formulated a new set of heritage regulations and submitted them to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and the committee hopes these will be inculcated in the new Development Plan. Ranganathan said that the BMC has been supportive of the committee’s work even though heritage conservation is not always on the radar for the civic body.
