‘No protected status to Moti Shahi palace’

AHMEDABAD: The state government has made it clear that it has no intention to include the Moti Shahi Palace (the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Memorial) in its list of state-protected monuments.
Congress MLA from Amreli Paresh Dhanani had wanted to know whether the state government wanted to restore the building’s status as a state-protected monument. In its reply to Dhanani’s question, the government replied that “at present the government does not have any intention to include the same in the list of state protected monuments.”
The government further said that the monument was built 400 years ago by Shah Jahan but, after the creation of Gujarat as a separate state, it was converted into Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Memorial.
In a written reply to another question of Dhanani, the state government admitted that building was declared a protected monument by the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) and included in the list of such structures in 1909.
The government further informed the House that after the creation of Gujarat, the building was removed from the list of heritage structures and converted into the official residence of the state’s Governor.
It may be recalled that the Times of India had carried out a campaign in 2012 against the construction being carried out at the palace by the caretaker trust. A PIL was also filed in the Gujarat High Court against the construction work but the court rejected it.
Shah Jahan, who was posted as governor of the province at the time, built this palace in 1616. The British notified the palace in March 1909 as a protected Class I (a) monument which gave it the same status as the Taj mahal. After Gujarat was carved out as a separate state, the Moti Shahi palace was delisted and converted into Raj Bhavan in 1961. The Governor's residence was shifted to Gandhinagar only in 1978 and, a year later, it was occupied by the Sardar Patel Memorial Society.