Key Points
I remember seeing a greater number of monuments here in my childhood..
Earlier this month, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) began the process of delisting 18 untraceable monuments, including the gumti in Mubarakpur, a kos minar (a Mughal-era highway milepost) in Gurgaon, a copper temple in Arunachal Pradesh, a 12th century temple in Rajasthan and a banyan grove in Varanasi with remains of ancient buildings..
India had 3,697 MNI, protected by ASI and funded by the central government under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958 (amended in 2010), according to Union Minister for Culture G Kishan Reddys reply in Rajya Sabha in December last year..
Compounding the problem of inadequate allocation and expenditure is the issue of imbalance in geographical distribution of funds for the protection of monuments, the report adds, highlighting how the city of Delhi with 173 monuments receives more allocation than Uttar Pradesh with 745 monuments and Maharashtra with 286 monuments...
In a written reply to a Rajya Sabha question on December 18, 2013, the then Union culture minister Chandresh Kumari Katoch listed 14 monuments from cities such as Hyderabad, Delhi and Lucknow as monuments affected due to rapid urbanisation and completely encroached upon, adding that these should not be treated as missing..
