It has taken the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) nearly a year to realise that the Mahim Fort is one of the worst examples of urban decay and neglect of the city’s cultural heritage.
The civic body, along with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA), will meet Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh in two weeks’ time to present before him a detailed report on the state of the fort.
This comes a year after Municipal Commissioner Johny Joseph made a special mention of the fort in his budget speech.
In these two weeks, the BMC and the agencies will conduct a survey to identify encroachment inside the fort, and chalk out a plan for its restoration.
“We took long to realise the importance of the fort although the plan for restoration was more or less in place,” said a senior civic official, requesting anonymity.
The BMC plans to hire well-known town-planners and architects to help prepare a comprehensive restoration plan for the fort.
A study funded by the MMRDA’s Heritage Society has found that most of the nine forts in Mumbai, which are encroached and in a state of complete neglect, require immediate restoration.
The study underlines the need for better zonal guidelines for the forts to stop encroachment and a detailed plan for the rehabilitation of the encroachers. It also recommends that all the forts in the city be brought under the State Department of Archaeology and Museums (SDAM).
“It is sad that the forts, which could have been used for heritage tourism, don’t even have an access. Nobody enjoys going to these forts now,” said Abha Narian Lamba, a well-known conservation architect.
