The Mahabodhi temple in Bodhgaya. Telegraph picture

Patna, May 6: The state government has set the ball rolling for validating the buffer zone around the Mahabodhi temple.

After getting a directive from the Bihar chief secretary, a 10-member local-level committee under the chairmanship of Gaya district magistrate, who also happens to be the chairperson of Bodhgaya Temple Management Committee (BTMC), has been set up to find out the details on the basis of which delineation of the buffer zone would be done.

Apart from representatives of BTMC, the committee also has members from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and state art and culture department.

Buffer zone would be certain area around the Mahabodhi temple where various restrictions, including those related to construction work, would come into force.

Though the Bodhgaya master plan talks of setting up buffer zone around the temple complex, yet this was never implemented, virtually allowing unrestricted construction in the vicinity of the temple complex.

The state government has set up the committee after a four-member Unesco team, which visited Bihar in the last week of February this year, expressed concern about the absence of any regulation on construction activities around the temple complex during its meeting with the chief secretary.

Prior to this meeting, the team members — Jing Feng and Takahiko Makino of World Heritage Centre, Gamini Wijesuriya of International Centre for Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property and Augusto Villalon of International Council on Monuments and Sites — had visited Bodhgaya to assess the ground realities.

The first meeting of the local committee was held recently after which the process of collecting data about the ground realities has been set in motion.

“After studying the facts, the committee would discuss in detail about the area which should be marked as buffer zone and based on this discussion it would send its recommendations to the state government,” BTMC secretary Nangzey Dorjee, who is the member secretary of the local committee, told The Telegraph over phone.

He said that the local committee had also been entrusted with the task of confirming the records of the boundaries of the temple complex.

Refusing to share details about the likely time the committee would take, Dorjee said that the fact finding work was an extensive one as several records had to be studied before putting the things before the local committee on the basis of which recommendations would be made.

Followed by the recommendations of the local committee, a state-level committee, which has been set up under the chairmanship of art and culture department principal secretary, would look into matter.

“The local committee would just be a recommending authority and any decision regarding demarcation of buffer zone has to be taken by the state government,” said a source in the art and culture department.

He said that after identifying the buffer zone, the state government would inform the ASI, which looks after the conservation of world heritage sites on behalf of Unesco in India, about the steps taken.

Mahabodhi temple is the state’s only site of historical importance which has been accorded the status of world heritage site by Unesco.