No pre-Lib destroyed religious structure identified in state

Times of India | 3 weeks ago | 16-11-2022 | 02:21 am

No pre-Lib destroyed religious structure identified in state

Panaji: The state government’s plan to restore and reconstruct religious and historic structures, destroyed during the Portuguese regime, may have hit a roadblock as no one has come forward with documents to identify such sites.The department of archaeology, in a public notice, had invited the general public, NGOs and historians, among others, to provide information of religious sites which were destroyed during the Portuguese regime after the state government did not find any documents to identify such sites.We have received a lot of representations from temple committees and from others, but that is not what we have asked them to provide information, archives and archaeology minister Subhash Phal Dessai told TOI.“Basically, people have come to us seeking to restore existing temples or religious sites and that does not come under this,” Phal Dessai said. The last date to submit details for restoration under this scheme is November-end.The minister said that the department will scrutinise all the representations and information.“We will once again start a study to find out if there is any document with the department which can point out if religious structures were demolished during the Portuguese regime,” Phal Dessai said. “Right now we don’t have any information related to religious structures which were demolished during the Portuguese regime.”Once such sites are identified, the department will take up work on the sites one after another, he said.Phal Dessai had said that the state government will reconstruct and restore temples and heritage sites destroyed during the Portuguese era at locations where there are no land disputes.In a first, the Pramod Sawant-led BJP government has made a budgetary provision of Rs 20 crore for reconstruction and restoration of temples and heritage sites destroyed during the Portuguese era.“Our places of worship are symbols of our rich cultural heritage. At many places in Goa, we find several temples in a dilapidated and neglected condition. During the Portuguese regime, there was a systematic effect to destroy these cultural centres. Considering tourism development, we have made a provision of Rs 20 crore for reconstruction and restoration of these temples and sites,” the chief minister had said in his budget speech. In December 2021, Sawant had said that in the 60th year of Goa’s Liberation, he wanted to initiate reconstruction of temples that had been destroyed by the Portuguese.

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Times of India | 1 day ago | 07-12-2022 | 04:47 am
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Goa’s first mgmt plans for protected areas in final stages of completion