Badshahpur Baoli continues to deteriorate, no fix in sight

GURUGRAM: There seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel for the 113-year-old Badshahpur Baoli, which is decaying under the weight of construction debris and waste. The baoli, which, until January 2018, faced the prospect of being covered up to make way for a road, is rapidly being filled up with construction and demolition waste, while sewage discharge from the neighbouring colonies keeps getting accumulated at the site.

When a Hindustan Times team visited the baoli on Sunday, construction debris was lined all along the length of the structure, while a significant portion of it was filled with sand, bricks, and plastic waste. The inside of the baoli was filled with sewage water and plastic bottles, while water hyacinth covered the top surface. The stairs that lead to the baoli were also littered with waste.

Ved Prakash Mangla, the great-grandson of Mohanlal Mangla, who had the baoli constructed in 1905, said that its condition was becoming worse by the day. “Locals from the area dump trash into the baoli and sewage discharge from the nearby unauthorised colonies also flows into it. People also treat it as a site for dumping construction debris or sand,” Mangla said.

He was the last custodian of the baoli until it was acquired by the erstwhile Huda (now Haryana Shahari Vikas Pradhikaran) in 2012.

Heritage experts said that various government agencies had turned a deaf ear to their concerns regarding the baoli’s fate, and due to a lack of action, the condition of the baoli was deteriorating with time “Construction debris is continuously being dumped all along the baoli. Open defecation around the baoli is very common. There is a regular flow of wastewater. We can only imagine the damage that the baoli would have suffered. You can’t see the demolition waste inside the baoli since it’s covered with water,” Parul Munjal, associate professor, Sushant School of Art and Architecture, said.

Munjal also said that government agencies were not intervening to prevent the baoli from rotting. “There is no clarity from the government whether it wants to do anything about the baoli. There has been no dialogue or progress on the conservation front,” she said.

Banani Bhattacharyya, deputy director, Department of Archaeology & Museums, said that there were no immediate plans of taking the baoli under protection. “No progress has been made on the front of the baoli so far. We are setting up a conservation unit, which will first review the status of already protected monuments, after which we will divert our focus on taking unprotected monuments under protection. We have a lot on our plate, and we can’t be taking monuments under our protection without the bandwidth to do so,” Bhattacharyya said.