Amritsar: Suspense over Golden Temple being considered for inclusion in the Unesco’s world heritage site list is over after the organization made it clear that there was no consideration or any application for considering to add the Sikhs’ holiest shrine in the list.
British Sikh Council, UK general secretary Tarsem Singh Deol, told Times of India Thursday that the deputy director, World Heritage Centre, Unesco, Kishore Rao, in a communique to them informed, “The site is included on the tentative list since 2004, we did not currently receive any nomination for its inscription on the world heritage list.”
Deol said that Rao also stated that he had received a number of letters and messages concerning the potential nomination of the Golden Temple for inclusion in the world heritage list. In the recent past, the social media was abuzz with rumours about the Golden Temple being considered by the World Heritage Committee of Unesco, in its 39th session meeting scheduled from June 28 to July 8 at Bonn in Germany, to be added to the new sites in the heritage list.
The issue had prompted Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) president Avtar Singh Makkar to react that they didn’t want the heritage status at cost of any external body interfering in the functioning of committee with respect to the management and maintenance of the Golden Temple.
Deol said there was a need to remove the from the tentative list. “We encourage everyone to write to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Rajnath Singh and the Indian consulate in London. The petitions should still be sent to state that the community agreement is not in place for the nomination should it ever be processed,” he said.