The house in Motihari where George Orwell was born in 1903 lies in ruins now. Picture by Ajit Kumar Verma

Patna, Dec. 27: The state government has finally woken up to the plight of the house where writer Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, was born.

The house where the author of masterpieces such as Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four was born on June 25, 1903, has now been declared a protected site by the Bihar government.

Eric’s father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked in the opium department of the Indian Civil Service and was posted in Motihari for a while. In 1904, Eric’s mother Ida Mabel Blair took the one-year-old to England.

Located in Bihar’s Motihari town, around 160km north of Patna, Orwell’s house had earlier been given to a local high school on lease, which was using it for residential purpose. Nothing much, however, was done to keep the house in good shape and at present the premises are in a shambles. The lease period has come also to an end.

The process of declaring the premises protected started in February this year when the art and culture department sent a team of experts to Motihari to assess the ground realities. After getting the land record details from the district administration and report of the experts’ team, the department gave the go-ahead for starting the process of declaring the house a protected site.

In accordance with the provisions of Bihar’s Ancient Monument (Protect) Act, 1976, the first notification was issued earlier for declaring the house a protected site and objections from people were invited. “As no one objected to the move, a final notification for declaring the house a protected site was issued on December 10, 2010,” Motihari circle officer Arun Kumar Rai told The Telegraph.

He said the premises, in which the house is located, measure 2.48 acres and the entire area is under the control of the art and culture department.

The art and culture department sanctioned a fund of Rs 29.16 lakh earlier this year for the construction of a boundary wall on the land. The department didn’t wait for a final notification, as after the end of the lease period the land had become government property.

The first instalment of Rs 3 lakh was provided to the district administration and a part of the boundary wall has already been constructed.

“We have sent the utilisation certificate of this fund to the art and culture department and the remaining portion of the boundary wall would be constructed when the balance fund would be given to the district administration,” East Champaran district magistrate Narmadeshwar Lal said.

Art and culture department secretary K.P. Ramaiah told The Telegraph that the department would undertake the conservation work at this protected site. “The goal is to keep this house in its original shape,” he said.

Ramaiah also said that a formal request has been sent to the tourism department for formulation of a detailed project report for sprucing up the premises so that visitors can know more about the works of the author.