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Jorhat, Aug. 19: A team from the International Council on Monuments and Sites is expected to visit Majuli later this year, to offer assistance in preparing a revised error-free dossier.
The council is an advisory body that provides technical guidance to the Paris-based World Heritage Centre (a Unesco body), which decides the World Heritage List.
The Archaeological Survey of India had recently written to the heritage centre in this regard and got a positive response. This was disclosed by the ASI director-general Jahnabi Sharma, at the first meeting of the advisory committee on world heritage matters held in New Delhi last week.
Upper Assam commissioner and CEO of Majuli Cultutral Landscape Authority, S.I. Hussain, told The Telegraph over phone from Delhi that Sharma had said the team would offer guidance to prepare the final draft of the revised Majuli dossier.
G.S.V. Surya Narayan Murthy, a conservationist architect, whose Hyderabad-based firm M/s Kshetra had prepared the dossier for the June 2012 bid, gave a presentation at the meeting.
Hussain, quoting Sharma, said the team would offer valuable advice to the firm engaged in preparing the revised draft. He said the team would also offer help in making the draft exactly according to the operational guidelines framed by global body for cultural landscape category of the World Heritage List.
He said the aim was to make the dossier error-free so the document was not sent back again by the World Heritage Centre. He also said the committee also agreed to his proposal to organise a workshop in Jorhat later this year or early next year, in which all those present in yesterday’s meeting and experts in Vaishnavite culture could attend.
“There are many scholars, including xatradhikars of Majuli xatras, who could offer vital suggestions in this regard,” Hussain said.
Murthy said involving the locals and experts and scholars of the culture practised in the river island in preparing the final draft, with advice from the ICOMOS team will be useful. He will also have an interaction with the people of Majuli next month, while presenting the preliminary draft of the revised dossier.
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