KMC plans to declare certain neighbourhoods in Calcutta heritage precincts
Telegraph | 3 February 2025
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation is willing to declare certain neighbourhoods in Calcutta heritage precincts but it does not want to rush through the process and roll out a plan that fails eventually.
How to compensate the owners of the properties in a heritage precinct since their “personal rights” will be restricted when the neighbourhood is declared a heritage precinct is yet to be worked out, said Dhaval Jain, the municipal commissioner, during a discussion on the city’s built heritage at The Bengal Club recently.
Jain highlighted the need to strike a balance between “community rights” of conserving heritage and the “personal rights” of the owner of a building in a heritage precinct.
A heritage precinct is different from a heritage building.
While an individual house can be tagged as a heritage structure, a precinct is a collection of houses on a road that together tell the story of a time, place or culture.
“Our intention is never to deny the idea of heritage precincts. We are very keen to protect the neighbourhoods as we know them. But we do not want to jump to conclusions without following baby steps to reach the destination, which is what will the adequate compensation be,” Jain said at the panel discussion.
The discussion, titled Calcutta’s Heritage and Our Future’, was organised by Calcutta Architectural Legacies (CAL) last week.
The municipal commissioner said the “building height, the street furniture and commercialisation rights will be restricted” in anarea declared a heritage precinct.
“You owning a house and how you will use it will be determined by the heritage conservation committee or the rules drafted by them,” Jain said.
He stressed that the government could restrict the owners’ personal rights but not ignore them altogether.
“Heritage is considered a public good of sorts. It has shared benefits.... Our Constitution allows the eminent domain. If it is a public issue, if it has shared benefits, if it is something that will give value to people at large, the eminent domain allows the government to intervene, basically have an overarching power over private property,” the municipal commissioner said.
The clamour to declare some neighbourhoods as heritage precincts is growing.
In May 2023, several Calcuttans and some others who used to live in the city earlier but still have their heartstrings knitted here, wrote to chief minister Mamata Banerjee with the demand.
The letter named BBD Bag and College Square in central Calcutta and Hindustan Park-Lake Temple Road-Dover Lane in south Calcutta neighbourhoods that can be declared heritage precincts.
Amit Chaudhuri, author and musician and a speaker at the discussion, underlined that a heritage precinct was not only colonial architecture but “neighbourhoods created by middle class and upper middle class Calcuttans”.
The panel discussion was moderated by author and educator Sarojesh Mukherjee.
Nobel laureate Esther Duflo, another speaker on the panel, spoke about how Prague had managed to retain its commercial centre deciding against haphazard development.
“Prague became a sought-after place for young tourists,” she said.
Many advocates of heritage precincts cite the example of Mumbai as an Indian city that has done well in protecting neighbourhoods.
Sameep Padora, an architect and urbanist, said pulling down a building in a heritage precinct in Mumbai was “very restricted”.
“Unless it is dilapidated and can cause a threat to people’s lives, you are not allowed to pull down a structure. The transfer of development rights (TDR) has been in practice in Mumbai for ages and that helped. The precincts are fairly protected,” said Padora, who is also the dean at the faculty of architecture at CEPT University, Ahmedabad.
In Calcutta, the KMC was also waiting for the National Monuments Authority to notify the rules for protected monuments in and around Dalhousie Square.
Sources in the civic body said the KMC wants to go through the notified rules before taking any decision on declaring Dalhousie Square a heritage precinct.
The five protected monuments are Currency Building in Dalhousie Square; Metcalfe Hall on Strand Road; St John’s Church on Council House Street; Maghen David Synagogue at the junction of Brabourne Road and Canning Street; and Beth-el-Synagogue on Pollock Street.
“We want to see how the rules play out. The rules have 300-metre zones. Believe me, the entire area gets covered,” said the municipal commissioner.
KMC sources said the civic body would wait and see what the rules say because making overlapping rules — the National Monument Authority rules and the KMC’s heritage precinct rules — might confuse people.
The National Monument Authority will frame separate rules for each of the protected monuments.
The sixth protected monument in Calcutta is the old building of Asiatic Society on Park Street.