Include, not exclude
The government must publish a fresh list including the heritage buildings, which were dropped from the previous one, in order to protect them from being demolished by their owners, demanded architectural experts yesterday.
They formed a human chain at Victoria Park in the capital, protesting demolition of a century-old heritage building on Hrishikesh Das Road.
In 2009, the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) published its maiden list of 93 heritage buildings, and 13 roads and many century-old structures, including house no. 41, 42, and 11, located on Hrishikesh Das road under four areas of Dhaka city.
But later in 2017, another list was published excluding the four areas. As a result, the aforementioned buildings were automatically excluded from the list of heritage buildings, said Taimur Islam, chief executive of Urban Study Group that works to protect the architectural heritage in Dhaka city.
Taking advantage of the new list, the building owners already started demolishing house no. 41 and 42 last week.
According to the locals, those three buildings belonged to legendary Hindu Zamindar Babu Hrishikesh Das, who had also built the famous historic palace named the Rose Garden.
Built during the colonial period, the two-storied elegant buildings have quite a stately presence on the heritage street.
Hrishikesh Das Road is one of the oldest streets in Old Dhaka. Although most of the buildings on this street were constructed in the colonial period, there are a couple of buildings which have their ground floors built after the style introduced by Mughal governor (subadar) Shayesta Khan, Taimur said.
Although many historic buildings on this street have been demolished over the last few decades, it still houses an adequate number of heritage buildings to be in the list as heritage road, he added.
Mirza Asifur Rahman, owner of the buildings no 41 and 42, said his buildings are not in the last list. They started the demolition to build an eight-storied building on the spot with permission from Rajuk.
The demonstrators also said the government should also consider compensating the owners in order to save the buildings.
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