PANAJI
The Pramod Sawant government's much-hyped plan to reconstruct and restore temples destroyed during the erstwhile colonial Portuguese rule on Friday got a fresh impetus with a panel of academicians set up to scrutinize the claims of destroyed shrines and select sites to be taken up.
The Committee, headed by Professor Varsha Kamat, who heads the history department of PES College, Ponda, has been given a time frame of 30 days to submit its report.
Apart from Dr Kamat, the panel also has on it Dr Rohit Phalgaonkar, Dr Varad S Sabnis, Balaji Shenoy and Ulhas K Prabhu Dessai as members.
The proposal shot into the news last year when Sawant announced it in his budget speech and allotted Rs 20 crore for "restoration and renovation of religious places destroyed during Portuguese era."
Subsequently, the Minister for Archives and Archeology Subhash Phaldesai took the proposal forward by issuing public notices through his department asking the members of the public to identify such sites of shrines destroyed during the Portuguese regime and file applications with the department.
Multiple such exercises were undertaken after poor response initially but the department did receive such applications with photographic and other evidence attached.
The Dr Kamat-led panel is expected to scrutinise these applications and select deserving sites. It is however unclear if the panel is given any mandate as to the number of sites to pick or any historic or archaeological criteria to be followed.
