When Pune-based Trust left in a huff
After watching the condition of Fatehpur Sikri Dargaah, the Pune–based Uttara Devi Trust sent a proposal to ASI for its repair, for which they were willing to pay. Just after the paperwork between the trust and ASI was completed, the trust started releasing the fund. If sources are to be believed, the trust offered to spend Rs 1 crore on the repair work of Dargaah. But RTI revealed that so far only Rs 50 lakh worth work was done in Dargaah. Sources say that the trust has already spent Rs 70 lakh on the Dargaah’s repair. But dissatisfied with the working style, the trust withdrew the offer and left Agra after spending Rs 50 or 70 lakh, whichever figure is correct, on the Dargaah repair. When contacted, the Uttara Devi Trust official refused to comment saying, “We have spent money we wanted to spend on Dargaah repair.” He refused to comment further on this issue. But some trust members are still residing in Fatehpur Sikri feeding 550 poor persons daily.
When contacted for his version on the issue of missing stones of Taj Mahal, R.K. Patel, the superintendent of ASI, Agra circle, says “Not only in Taj Mahal, but in all the monument where inlay work has been done, we try to re-use the fallen stones. Sometimes, we get complaint of stones getting cracks after they fall down from the main monument. Sometimes a substance used for fixing the stones in the walls releases the stone. In that case we try to fix that stone again”. “If sometime the stone is not in a condition of re-use, then we use another piece at that place. But number of such stones is less”. But when asked repeatedly about the stones which are left behind, Patel gave no direct answer but instead said, “What we will do with any material, it all depends on the condition. For that we use our experience too, which thing to use where, and lots of methodology is involved in it. No one or two methods are involved in this”. “What we do with the fallen out stones, we have already replied that in RTI,” adds Patel. But in reality no such reply has been given in the RTI. The ASI has even denied keeping record of such fallen stones of the Taj Mahal in the RTI. In the end, Patel invited us to his office for answering all our questions.
