Even as Assam has renewed its campaign to get UNESCO World Heritage Site status for Majuli, one of the largest inhabited river islands in the world, some in the state are blaming the Archaeological Survey of India for the failure of its previous attempt. UNESCO had returned Majuli’s nomination for World Heritage Site saying it was “technically incomplete”. ASI had sent only two copies of nomination dossier instead of three as required. Worse, one of them had several pages missing. The World Heritage Committee has now asked New Delhi to send its revised dossier by September 30.

Delhi Metro’s ‘Heritage Corridor’ has hit a roadblock once again. The Phase III project is stuck in a deadlock between the National Monument Authority (NMA) and the Delhi Metro with the former insisting on a “structural impact study” to be conducted by IIT in Delhi or Roorkee. However, Delhi Metro wrote to the NMA last week informing that both the institutes have refused to conduct the study citing lack of expertise.

That Predictable Strong Arm

Avoids Giving National Monument Status To Geographical Feature In Palk Strait. The Centre on Thursday shied away from taking a stand in the Supreme Court on whether it intended to confer national monument status on Ram Sethu, a geographical feature in the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka resembling the mythological bridge built by Lord Rama’s army in epic Ramayana.

The Centre came up with a blank today on whether to declare Ram Setu in the Palk Strait a national monument, leaving the Supreme Court with no option but to interpret the government’s silence as its unwillingness to take a position “this way or the other”.

Residents Flout Heritage Law, Illegal Structures Rise Within 100M Of Monument
Khirki village in south Delhi has no time for heritage laws. From the roof of its Tughlaq-era Khirki Masjid, you can see workers with hammers at work inside houses and scaffoldings raised along the walls of buildings creeping up an arm’s length away, even as drilling machines drown out all other sounds in the vicinity. This, when rules for the protection of national monuments clearly prohibit construction within 100 metres, and allow it between 100-300 metres only after permission from heritage bodies.

Delhi has slipped from sixth to eighth position in primary education over the past year and from seventh to eighth in upper primary education over the same period, a survey has revealed. Child Rights and You (CRY), an NGO, conducted the survey to provide an assessment of schools run by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). The report collates information from the BJP and Congress manifestos for 2007 elections, MCD budget for 2010-11 and 2011-12, newspaper reports and responses to RTI/RTE applications.

The high court on Wednesday directed the Victoria Memorial Hall curator to prepare an inventory of the exhibits in the museum within four weeks and table it before the bench hearing the case. The division bench of Justice P.C. Ghose and Justice M.K. Chakrabarti passed the order after green activist Subhas Datta submitted that the memorial authorities had been sitting on a 1993 order of the court seeking a report on the exhibits.

KOLKATA, 29 FEB: The curator of Victoria Memorial was directed by the Division Bench of Mr Justice Pinaki Ghosh and Mr Justice Mrinalkanti Choudhuri of Calcutta High Court today to make an inventory of the exhibits in this marble mausoleum and give an affidavit to the court within four weeks. The court also directed environmental activist Subhas Dutta to give a copy of his petition regarding not making an inventory of these exhibits.

Lok shikshan kendras are being set up in every Haryana village with a population of 5,000 each under the Saakshar Bharat Mission, a Centrally sponsored scheme. Samir Pal Saro, Director General, School Education, Haryana, said these kendras would be equipped with a library and one would be able to get information regarding agriculture and other programmes through the motivators at these centres. Saro said a 15-member committee would also be constituted at village level for the successful functioning of these centre.