Indranil Sen to launch seminar on World Heritage Day today

Indranil Sen, Minister of State for Information and Cultural Affairs department and Tourism department will inaugurate a seminar to celebrate the World Heritage Day on Tuesday.

The programme has been organised by the West Bengal Heritage Commission. Atri Bhattacharya, principal secretary, Information and Cultural Affairs department and Tourism department will give the introductory note.

April 18 was declared as International Day for Monuments and Sites and was created in 1982 by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS).

Traditionally, it was known as the World Heritage Day. It was later approved at the General Conference of UNESCO in 1983. The state government has revamped the West Bengal Heritage Commission with Suvaprasanna as its chairman and Sanskrit scholar Nrisingha Prasad Bhaduri as its co-chairman. The other members are Partha Ranjan Das, Sujata Sen, Himadri Banerjee, Arin Chowdhury, Kalyan Rudra, Aparajita Sengupta, Kaniska Bishi and a member of the Lepcha Council. A senior official of the state Environment department is also a member of the commission.

It may be recalled that the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) in 1996 first identified some heritage buildings in the city and imposed a ban on their demolition and changing of the facades. Most of the state and Central government buildings were included in the list along with some landmark private heritage buildings in the city.

Shortly after this, the then Left Front government had set up the state Heritage Commission and imposed a similar ban on the demolition of old structures all over the state. After coming to power, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee insisted on the preservation of old structures and set up a new commission. The present committee was set up in February.