Naveen Jindal

New Delhi, June 2: Naveen Jindal wants to raze his house and rebuild it.

Shouldn’t be a problem for the industrialist-MP. Wrong, he’s just kicked up a huge row.

The 1921 house happens to be a heritage building in the heart of New Delhi’s sacrosanct Lutyens Building Zone. Which means if Jindal, who earlier won for citizens the right to hoist the national flag on their homes, is allowed to go ahead and demolish the house, he will be violating the rules that govern the zone, a conservation area.

Designed by British architect Edwin Lutyens, the 26-sq-km area in the heart of the capital gives the city a flavour of its imperial past, and successive Delhi governments have emphasised the need to retain the stamp of its special heritage, endowed by several empires over the centuries.

Jindal’s house has become a test case not only for the Delhi government, which has been waxing eloquent on the city’s heritage, but also for conservationists across the country.

Experts also point out that the Congress MP from Kurukshetra, who should be setting an example, could open the floodgates for other demolitions by private property owners.

Jindal, whose elder brother Sajjan unveiled a path-breaking initiative on Thursday to compensate families who would have to give up land for his proposed steel plant in Bengal, was not available for comment as he is vacationing in London. But his architect, Ravi Kaimal, argued that the property didn’t have any historical or architectural significance.

In fact, Kaimal at first didn’t even agree that the property belonged to Jindal. He had said a company called Mineral Management Services India Pvt. Ltd owned it.

S.K. Mishra, chairman of Intach, a non-profit organisation devoted to conserving national heritage, says Lutyens Delhi should be a “protected” zone. “If a beginning is made with the demolition of this building, then other owners may also follow. Nothing will then be left of Lutyens Delhi.’’

Jindal’s house, in a 3.8-acre plot, is now before the Heritage Conservation Committee (HCC) set up by the Supreme Court in 2004-05. An HCC sub-committee, which looked into the matter a couple of months ago, had pointed out that the house, indeed, had “historical and sociological interest”.

The Supreme Court had got into the conservation battle after Intach carried out a mammoth listing of Delhi’s heritage buildings from 1995-2000, the first time such an exercise had been conducted.

But Jindal’s architect is dismissive about the effort. “It has many factual errors. It was carried out by well-intentioned volunteers and youngsters, who roamed around the streets of Delhi on their motorbikes,’’ says Kaimal.