No World Heritage City celebration, says Mayor

Due to the flood situation in some parts of the city that prevailed during the last week of July, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani had announced new dates for the Heritage festival. Earlier, to honour the Unesco ‘World Heritage City’ title awarded to Ahmedabad on July 8, it was decided that fortnightly celebrations will be held across the city. But, following the floods, the CM announced that the celebrations will be postponed by a week.

The new dates announced by the Chief Minister were August 6 to August 14, instead of August 1 to August 14. Now, after the situation worsened in several areas across the state, including some pockets of Ahmedabad, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has decided to postpone the celebration further. New dates will be announced soon.

“We have postponed the celebrations. The new dates are yet to be decided,” said Mukesh Kumar, Municipal Commissioner, Ahmedabad.

Commenting on this, Mayor Gautam Shah said that many parts of the city are battling a tough situation post the heavy spell of rainfall. “We are not going to celebrate the heritage festival week. As of now, we are only focusing on the improvement of peoples’ health and reconstruction of city roads. Also, we are trying to work out ways to help the people in Banaskantha,” Shah said.

Though the Mayor says that no celebration is likely, officials on the condition of anonymity said, the celebration might be held in the world heritage week.

UNESCO TAG

• Ahmedabad is the city first city in the country that was honoured with a World Heritage City tag.
   
• To honour the UNESCO tag, it was decided that fortnightly celebrations will be held across the city.
   
• Recently, the Delhi government also decided to file nominations for the same.