New Delhi: The Archaeological Survey of India declared two sites, a Shiva Temple in Telangana and an ancient mound in Andhra Pradesh, as centrally protected monuments on Tuesday.
The ASI first issued a preliminary notification, and after a two-month objection period, added the sites to the CPM list.
“After consideration of objection received within the prescribed period of two months from the date of publication of the Notification, the Central Government has found no sufficient ground to withhold or modify the proposed declaration,” read the Gazette notification dated 2 July, accessed by ThePrint.
Spread over 0.275 acres, the 13th-century Shiva temple site in Telangana’s Mulugu district is currently in a dilapidated state. The land belongs to the ASI, but the site was not previously on its protected list.
The temple was built during the Kakatiya period under rulers Rudradeva and Recharla Deva. A site plan shows a canal near the Shiva Temple.
The other site, an ancient mound in Tirupati district of Andhra Pradesh, is the excavated remains found in Kotadibba village, spread over 24.22 acres.
This site, which dates back about 2,000 years, was once a fortified trading hub in South India and flourished under the Satavahana empire.
Excavations at the site revealed ruins featuring a 130-metre-long elliptical brick fortification, sophisticated ancient water management structures, and planned civic layouts.
The archaeological mound is known as Kotadibba and lies on the right bank of a Swarnamukhi distributary.
“This particular site discovered with 6-ft-wide brick walls, structures and defence systems, is yielding new evidence on the Andhra region as earlier exploited sites in the South do not have evidence of such structures, which is very interesting,” KP Rao, a history professor at Hyderabad University, had said in 2019.
Also read: ASI has delayed filling 50 vacant posts since 2024. Candidates anxious, helpless
Declaring a protected monument
Telangana monuments come under the jurisdiction of ASI’s Hyderabad circle, which has eight centrally protected monuments. Andhra Pradesh comes under the Amravati circle with 135 protected monuments.
Adding a site to the protected list is not an easy task. Only a few monuments have been added in the last decade because of ASI’s detailed guidelines.
The process for the inclusion of any site in the ASI’s protected list includes five steps: assessment and proposal, preliminary notification, public objections, evaluation, and review and final notification.
In June, ASI issued a preliminary notification to declare Bihar’s Raniwas Mound as a site of national importance. The site is near the world’s largest Buddhist Stupa in Champaran district.
In its 2013 and 2022 reports, CAG said that no comprehensive survey to identify monuments of national importance had been undertaken by ASI.
In 2024, ASI delisted 18 centrally protected monuments from its national list.
In the past two years, ASI has been focusing on bringing more sites under its jurisdiction.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)