What caused the Disappearance of 50 ASI-Protected Monuments?

About Centrally Protected Monuments

• These are sites that are more than 100 years old, including temples, cemeteries, inscriptions, tombs, forts, palaces, step-wells, rock-cut caves, and even objects like cannons and mile pillars that may be of historical significance.
• To protect these sites the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958 (AMASR Act) regulates the preservation of monuments and archaeological sites of national importance. 
• The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which is under the aegis of the Union Ministry of Culture, functions under this Act. 

Causes of Missing Monuments

Priority to other sectors

• After Independence, the government focused largely on sectors like health, education, and infrastructure. 
• The scope of heritage was only limited to finding more monuments, instead of conservation. All this led to the disappearance of monuments.

Other Factors

• Other factors that caused great loss to the heritage sites include 14 monuments to urbanization, 12 to the construction of dams and reservoirs, and even encroachments also. 
• In addition to these 24 monuments or sites are untraceable, which brings the number of missing monuments to 50.
• The budgetary constraints and shortage to physically man for big and small monuments is also a cause for this loss and for any future loss, if not addressed now.

Survey of Monuments

• The ASI officials said that post-Independence the physical survey of all monuments has never been conducted.
• As per a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report in 2013, at least 92 centrally protected monuments across the country had gone missing.
• As per the recent report shared by ASI, “out of the 92 monuments declared as missing by the CAG, 42 have been identified due to efforts made by the ASI.”

Removing Monuments from the Protected List

• The process of deletion requires denotification of the said monument under Section 35 of the AMASR Act, which happens to be a long-drawn process. 
• It is because a missing monument cannot be automatically equated with the loss of its historical importance.
• Section 35 has the provision to issue notifications only for such Centrally Protected Monuments (CPMs) which, according to the central government, have ceased to be of national importance. 
• It is recommended that the untraceable monuments may not be removed from the list, because once that is done, there would be no imperative to find them. 
• It is also recommended that the missing monuments can be added to the list of Untraceable Monuments and if necessary, the AMASR Act be amended to include this terminology.