New Delhi: About 50 of India’s 3,693 protected monuments have become ‘untraceable’ and have gone missing as per the report submitted to the Parliament on December 8 by the Ministry of Culture. The report pointed out the ‘grave concern’ and said that some monuments protected under the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) have been missing for several years. The reasons cited for the same include urbanisation and submerging under dam water while some are difficult to trace due to remote locations.
The ministry shared the reports titled ‘Issues relating to Untraceable Monuments and Protection of Monuments in India’ to the Parliamentary Standing Committee of Transport, Tourism and Culture. A similar observation was shared by senior ASI officials in May 2022.
The alleged missing monuments include at least 11 from Uttar Pradesh and two each from Delhi and Haryana, with monuments from other states also being on the list. 14 out of the total monuments are reportedly missing due to urbanisation, 12 are submerged under water and 24 are untraceable.
Officials, explaining the issues, said that many of these missing monuments are inscriptions and tablets which could have been removed or destroyed. When the monuments were being physically verified for the first time since Independence, it was revealed in 2013 that 92 monuments were missing. Out of these 92 monuments, ASI managed to identify 42.
As per the Sunday Express, a majority of ASI-protected sites were discovered in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s and it has been difficult to relocate some of those sites.
