New Delhi: Around 11 per cent of monuments and areas under the jurisdiction of the Archaeological Survey of India are grappling with encroachment, culture minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat said in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
“There are 414 protected monuments and areas under the jurisdiction of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) having encroachments,” replied Shekhawat over a question by MP Parimal Nathwani.
Across the country, ASI maintains 3,686 monuments and sites. In Parliament, Shekhawat presented data for 24 states, showing that at least 414 sites are under encroachment.
The most affected states are Uttar Pradesh, where 78 sites are under encroachment, followed by 72 in Tamil Nadu, 60 in Karnataka, 49 in Maharashtra, 30 in Rajasthan, and 15 in West Bengal.
However, the CAG compliance audit report tabled in Parliament in March this year stated that cases of encroachment were reported at 96 centrally protected monuments within the ASI circles of Uttar Pradesh.
With 414 of 3,686 protected sites facing threats from urbanisation, illegal constructions and human activities, the ASI’s conservation efforts are under siege.
In Delhi, 14 sites are under encroachment. Delhi has 174 centrally protected monuments and sites, such as the Red Fort, Humayun Tomb and Qutub Minar, among others.
Goa, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Daman and Diu, Sikkim, and Tripura are the states where only one site is under encroachment.
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Decade-old struggle
In Haryana, six sites are under encroachment. Last year, ASI sent eviction notices to Kaithal’s Theh Polar village, where around 5,000 villagers reside.
For decades, ASI has been struggling to clear encroachment at Theh Polar but has not succeeded. “Theh Polar village history goes back to the Mahabharata period, but for many decades it has been in illegal occupation,” KA Kabui, superintending archaeologist at ASI’s Chandigarh circle, had told ThePrint in 2025.
From Delhi, Sambhal, to Nalanda, ASI has conducted eviction drives across India. But the progress has been sluggish. In the last two decades, it succeeded in reclaiming two sites—the Delhi-Barapullah bridge in 2024 and the Tughlaqabad Fort in 2023.
The encroachment at ASI monuments in 2023 stood at 531 monuments—14.4 per cent. The number has gone down by more than a hundred in three years.
In 2021, the Standing Committee of Parliament had recommended that ASI develop an application permitting users to report violations of rules and regulations, incidents of vandalism, and encroachment. “It was noted that ASI had no centralised system to register online complaints/grievances of the general public on encroachments or illegal activities at its monuments and to monitor their redressal,” reads the report.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)