The ASI, which is in charge of maintaining the 3,686 protected places in India, lays down rules as to how much modern construction and activity is allowed near these sites. No construction is allowed within a 100-meter radius of monuments. Within the next 200 meters, only constructions below a certain height are permitted. This ensures that the view and land around the monument remain relatively undisturbed.
However, the rules often remain unimplemented because India, a country of 1.25 billion people, has little room to spare. Most of these ancient sites are located in populated and sometimes densely populated areas. To help detect illegal constructions around these sites, the ASI has begun a pilot project that uses ISRO’s satellite-based mapping portal Bhuvan, to track new constructions that spring up around protected monuments.
The pilot run has begun in the southern state of Karnataka and the eastern Indian state of Maharashtra. “We have around 115 sites under us and work on 30 of them is already done. The entire data marking the protected zones will be uploaded on our website and citizens will have to do their work accordingly,” said MS Chauhan, superintending engineer from ASI’s Mumbai Circle. “With satellite images, there will be no ambiguity and no one can claim that the structure came before the rule was applicable. There was a case where people have altered physical records, which cannot happen through satellite,” he explained.
The initiative is part of a larger push, begun by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to increase the use of space technology for public benefit. Kiran Kalamdani, a heritage architect based in India, explained that much work will be required to ensure the safekeeping of India’s monuments. However, the mapping initiative will provide a necessary foundation to build on.
However, Mohan Shete, who founded the heritage conservation non-profit Itihas Premi Mandal, explained that in many places, the government itself is the offending party. “We have an old city demarcation wall, probably 800 years old, near Kasba Peth but there is a public toilet near it,” he said, talking of the city of Pune in Maharashtra.
