Agra | City of stalled initiatives

It was meant to be a grand challenge, showcasing Mughal-era armour, apparel, tradition and associated memorabilia. But take the purple sandstone-topped Shilpgram Road to the jap gate of the Taj Mahal, previous the stone plaque bearing the legend ‘Mughal Museum’ and enter the iron gate adjoining to it, and also you step right into a dream that has lengthy been deserted.

The three-storey constructing on the 5.9-acre campus, 1,300 metres from the Taj’s jap gate, has been mendacity unfinished for nearly six years now. More than two dozen costly cassette air-conditioners lie rusting within the open, reinforcing the sense of dystopia. The advanced was to have a handicrafts market, a seminar corridor and an artwork gallery. The corridor for the handicrafts market is crammed with rainwater; bushes have grown round it; the stones and tiles within the seminar corridor—now serving as a shelter for stray canines—have come off in a number of locations.

The deserted Mughal Museum-turned-Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum; (Photo: Maneesh Agnihotri)

Presiding over this deserted panorama is a shiny yellow banner fluttering on the gate, saying the construction’s new title—the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum. And moderately than documenting any Mughal splendour, the renamed construction will show the historical past of the Braj Mandal, the place Lord Krishna is believed to have been born and spent his childhood and adolescent years.

Ever because the BJP authorities took cost within the state, the demand to vary the names of the roads, parks, monuments and many others. in Agra has elevated exponentially; some have already been renamed (see What’s in a Rename?). Former BJP MLA Jagan Prasad Garg has written to the chief minister looking for the renaming of Agra to Agravan. On May 4, deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, whereas inspecting the metro challenge work, directed the officers to rechristen the Jama Masjid station Mankameshwar, on the suggestion of G.S. Dharmesh, the BJP MLA from Agra Cantt.

The BJP authorities has additionally renamed a lot of roads and parks to lift its political capital. The well-known Mughal Road in Kamla Nagar is now Maharaja Agrasen Road, since final November. On January 6, simply earlier than the 2022 meeting election, the federal government issued an order to rename Teramauri, the 76-acre state park in Fatehpur Sikri, to Gokula Jat Park, to woo the Jat voters. A life-size statue of Gokula Jat can also be being erected right here. (In May 1666, the peasant military of Gokula Jat confronted the Mughal military within the Battle of Tilpat.)

The most controversial, in fact, is the marketing campaign to rename the Taj. On August 31, Shobha Ram Rathore, the BJP councillor within the Agra Municipal Corpora­tion, proposed that the marble mausoleum be renamed Tejo Mahalaya. “There are many reasons for it,” he says. “The monument was named so by a foreign traveller. The present name is a distortion of Tejo Mahalaya. The word ‘Mahal’ is not asso­ciated with any cemetery in the world.” However, the movement couldn’t be mentioned as a result of a conflict between the BJP and Bahujan Samaj Party councillors within the House. “The proposal will be considered for discussion in the next sitting of the House,” says mayor Naveen Jain, although he admits that renaming the Taj Mahal is exterior the jurisdiction of the company. Rathore is intent on pushing his proposal once more.

“The BJP government,” says Ramji Lal Suman, former nationwide common secretary of the Samajwadi Party (SP), “is targeting the Mughal-era monuments. The government has not done any development work here in the past five years. It has only changed the names of roads, parks and monuments.” For a metropolis that was as soon as the capital of the Mughal empire, and is dwelling to a few Unesco World Heritage Sites—the Taj Mahal (which alone attracts round eight million guests yearly), the Agra Fort and the Fatehpur Sikri—the renaming spree is nothing however an undisguised try to rewrite historical past. “Instead of giving priority to the works of public interest,” says Shiromani Singh, the one Congress councillor within the company, “the corporation has changed the identity of more than 50 roads and crossings in Agra in the past five years by renaming them, but the situation has still not changed.”

The unfinished IT Park at Shastripuram; a statue of Maharana Pratap ready to be unveiled; (Photo: Maneesh Agnihotri)

And nothing symbolises it higher than the destiny of the Mughal Museum-turned-Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum. It was the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP authorities that had began the development of the state-of-the-art challenge—additionally touted because the state’s largest—in January 2016 on Power House land. The deadline for the Rs 141-crore challenge was December 2017. Construction work picked up tempo within the first 12 months when the principle construction was constructed with Rs 99 crore. But then only a 12 months later, the management in Uttar Pradesh modified, with the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP authorities taking cost in March 2017.

Later, a denial of funds led to building coming to a standstill. In September 2020, the federal government renamed the museum in honour of Chhatrapati Shivaji. However, as an engineer concerned within the building, says, “The name was changed, but the budget for its construction was not released. Because of this, the builder, Tata Projects, quit the work. However, during this period, the cost has escalated to Rs 186 crore.” Deepak Dan, president of the Tourist Guide Welfare Association in Agra, says that they anticipated a quicker completion of the development work after the renaming, but it surely didn’t even resume.

The Yogi authorities, which returned to energy in March 2022, is now mooting a public-private partnership mannequin for the museum. Before that, nevertheless, the challenge will likely be redesigned. Dilip Singh, the challenge supervisor of the Rajkiya Nirman Nigam, the chief physique for museum building, says, “We have sent a letter to the government informing it about the status of the project. The construction will start as soon as the budget is received.”

Not everybody in Agra, although, is pleased with the renaming agenda. “The Taj Mahal,” says Rajiv Saxena, vice-president of the Tourism Guild of Agra, “is one of the wonders of the world. It is shameful to do politics in the name of a monument monitored by the Supreme Court and Unesco. This is tarnishing India’s image.” Ok.C. Jain, Supreme Court advocate and secretary of the Agra Development Foundation, agrees: “In the past five years, the government has not approved a single new hotel in the city, whereas unprovoked disputes are being created over the Taj Mahal. This is adding to the crisis in the tourism industry.”

Many growth plans have certainly been hanging hearth. Among these is the rubber test dam challenge to preserve the Taj. Chief Minister Yogi had in 2017 introduced the development of a barrage downstream of the Yamuna, 1.5 km from the monument. An official of the irrigation division, who didn’t need to be recognized, says, “For a long time, the project swung between the barrage and the rubber dam before the government agreed to the latter.” A sum of Rs 413 crore was estimated to be spent on the 344-metre-long dam to be in-built Nagla Paima village. The authorities earmarked Rs 50 crore for it within the 2018-19 funds, adopted by Rs 6 crore the subsequent 12 months, and Rs 100 crore in 2020-21. So, Rs 156 crore has lapsed because the work couldn’t begin. In the present monetary 12 months, the federal government has made a provision of Rs 20 crore for the dam. According to Tarun Sharma, an assistant professor of historical past on the Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar University in Agra, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has stipulated the water degree be 148 metres within the Yamuna behind the Taj Mahal. This would make sure that its basis continues to get moisture, which is essential for the monument’s safety. But the development is dogged by fixed delay, baffling conservationists.

In response to an RTI question by environmental activist Debashish Bhattacharya, the irrigation division on August 26 replied that they’ve permission to construct the dam from the Inland Waterways Authority of India, the Central Water Commission, the ASI and the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute. Earlier in April, the Taj Trapezium Zone Authority—mandated to guard the monument—had consented to the dam. However, the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority has not but studied the challenge. This is additional delaying permissions from the Union surroundings ministry and the National Mission for Clean Ganga. Higher training Minister and Agra Southern MLA Yogendra Upadhyay says, “The construction work will start soon. Efforts have been intensified to get NOC from all departments.” He has additionally requested the chief minister to take away the obstacles within the building of assorted different initiatives. Until that occurs growth will stay hostage to political crucial.

— ENDS —