Varanasi misses UNESCO's heritage cities list once again

NEW DELHI: Narendra Modi’s plans to popularise the ancient heritage of his constituency Varanasi may be on mission mode but the city has yet again lost an opportunity to be listed among Unesco World Heritage cities. Varanasi does not figure even in the shortlist of cities that could be nominated as a world heritage city by the Unesco, officials at the ministry of culture said.

“We can recommend only one city a year and there is already a list of 40 Indian cities on the tentative list. Varanasi is not even on the tentative list. The dossier sent by the UP government lacks details on certain aspects of the city,” said a senior ministry official. The official explained that an expert committee studies the dossiers of the nominated cities to finalise the shortlist, after which the country is asked to send out a nomination. Only New Delhi has made it to the final stage this year, he said. Unesco is set to announce its recommendations on this year’s nominated world heritage cities in the next few days.

UP government officials said they were looking into the matter. While mails sent to the government went unanswered, an official in the urban development ministry headed by Azam Khan said conservation of Varanasi heritage is being handled by tourism, culture, housing and urban development ministries, and quite often there is confusion over the department that is supposed to handle the dossier to be submitted to the centre. “If not the entire city, at least the river ghats and old city of Varanasi satisfy the Unesco cultural heritage criteria.

There should be at least focused effort to get the 6.8 km of 80 ghats of Ganga listed under the world heritage sites,” said Rana PB Singh, professor of cultural geography and heritage studies at Banaras Hindu University. India recently submitted a revised tentative list of 46 famous sites for inclusion in the list of Unesco’s World Heritage Sites. Varanasi’s ancient Buddhist site, Sarnath, is the only one to find a mention in the list, although the city is known to have more than 20 heritage sites. Experts blame bureaucratic delays, lack of coordination between central and state governments, and shortage of documentation regarding the city’s plans for Varanasi missing out on the opportunity.

“The approach lacks persistence. The dossier to be submitted to UN requires a ten-year vision for the city that includes financial, management and structural plans and an intensive proof document on the city’s heritage value. Most of it is already ready but unless civic bodies, NGOs and bureaucrats interact more, specific details will always be missing, making the document incomplete,” Singh said.