Did BMC ignore fire temples while preparing development plan?

If the new draft development plan (DP) 2034 has its way, the already shrinking Parsi community of Mumbai has much to worry. Several Parsi agiaries (fire temples) have not been marked in the city's development blueprint, which provides for the city's land use plan for the next 20 years from now.

The Seth Nasemanji Ratanji Tata Agiary, popularly known as Tata agiary, on Bandra's Hill road, Seth Jejeebhoy Dadabhoy Agiary at Colaba's Pilot Bunder road, Ardeshir Dadibhoy Dadiseth Agiary at Fort are some of the 24 fire temples across the city which do not show up in the draft DP. Also, the outline of the holy Bhika Behram Well at Flora Fountain has been changed in the plan. Most of these structures are among the city's heritage structures which have been listed mostly as grade II or III.

Mani Patel, a citizen activist from Bandra west who frequents the fire temple at Bandra, says she is shocked at the omission.

Patel, who has been attending several DP decoding sessions organised by different residents' groups, said, "I will be selfish to write to the authorities about problems in the DP maps that concern me first. The Tata agiary is very close to my house and one of the very few ones in this locality. I am surprised it doesn't feature in the land use maps."

Patel recalls how more than 1,000 community members and other citizens had come together way back in 2006, to protest against the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's Hill Road widening plan that could have led to demolition of certain portions of the agiary. "The plan would have affected the agiary and two other churches. We will again resort to protest, this time against the omission of our agiary on the DP," Patel said.

Another Parsi resident, who frequents the agiary, on condition of anonymity, said, "It is important for the trustees of the Tata agiary to wake up and object to this deletion. So far, only local residents have been fighting for it."

Khojeste Mistree, trustee of Bombay Parsi Punchayet, said the issue will be discussed at length in its next meeting.

"If the DP is touching religious places built so many years ago, we will have to fight against it unitedly. All individual trust heads will write to the government asking them to rectify the omissions," he stated.

Pankaj Joshi, executive director of the Urban Design Research Institute, who has prepared an exhaustive list of all the missing heritage structures on the list, said, "As per the development control rules, if any structure doesn't show up on the land use maps, the heritage regulations do not apply on them."

"This is a back-door mischief to take the structures off the heritage list," he alleged.

According to him, 1,043 of the total 1,496 heritage structures are missing in the draft DP.

Municipal commissioner Sitaram Kunte told dna, "I hope the DP is being studied properly and the list made accordingly. The DP is on the GIS and has 58 layers. Each layer shows different aspects and shows different things. Ideally, those marked in the 1995 heritage list should be marked in the land use maps."