Last Updated: 29.08.24

Heritage List

 Of the 149 heritage assets listed in the draft notification published for public suggestions and objections by the Satara Municipal Council on January 31, 2013, only 38 heritage assets made it to the final draft published on August 14, 2014.

BEAG requested the Government of Maharashtra to reinstate at least another 38 of the assets that had been excluded in the final draft of the notification. The 38 assets BEAG was recommending for inclusion were of three types: Assets under the ownership of the government, assets under religious and institutional use, and natural assets.

BEAG’s request to reinstate the 38 excluded assets in the final draft of the notification were forwarded on July 22, 2015 by the Government of Maharashtra to the state Director of Town Planning in Pune, which sent in on to the Assistant Director Town Planning(ADTP), Satara, requesting a report within 15 days. The ADTP, in turn, sent it to the Satara Municipal Council for its report.

BEAG’s request was in the bureaucratic maze.

Luckily, the Heritage Conservation Committee (HCC) for the Mahabaleshwar Panchgani Eco-Sensitive Zone (MPESZ) and the areas governed by the municipal councils of Satara, Wai, Panchgani and Mahabaleshwar was reconstituted on June 2, 2016.

BEAG wrote to the newly reconstituted HCC, urging it to consider its request to reinstate the deleted sites based on their merits, pointing out that when the Satara Municipal Council had finalized the heritage asset list, the HCC had not been constituted, which meant that no heritage experts had been involved in the decision-making.

The HCC invited BEAG to present its case at the next HCC meeting.

On August 4, 2018, BEAG gave a detailed presentation at the HCC meeting. By this time, BEAG had pared down its list to 30 sites.

At the end of the meeting, the HCC made the decision to constitute a sub-committee of its heritage conservation experts to conduct a site visit to all the 30 sites along with BEAG and to submit a report on its findings.

After the final site visit on October 5, 2018, the HCC sub-committee submitted its report to the HCC on October 24, 2018. Of the sites proposed by BEAG for addition, 27 sites were recommended by the subcommittee.

The Satara Municipal Council published the list of 27 additional sites for public suggestions and objections. But one year later, in December 2019, the Satara Municipal Council stated that it had received objections from owners about four sites in the HCC recommended list on the grounds that they had no heritage value and were within certain developments.

After much discussion, the HCC unanimously decided to retain three of the four sites to which objections had been raised.

Altogether, 26 initially excluded sites have been now recommended for inclusion within the Heritage List.