2 days ago
UT's heritage furniture to go under the hammer in US
Chandigarh: Chandigarh heritage furniture will go under the hammer in Los Angeles, USA, on July 17. Three furniture items designed by Pierre Jeanneret, including a desk and chair, file rack, and nightstands from the MLA Flats building, have been offered at a price of around Rs 30 lakh.
Ajay Jagga, advocate and member of the Heritage Item Protection Cell, UT, in a letter to Dr K Srikar Reddy, Consul General, Indian Embassy, San Francisco, has sought "protection of the city's heritage, in accordance with the rules/protocol, for which an alarm must be raised. We must seek to understand how these items reached the auction house in the USA, where the original documents are, where the bills are, and where the proof of transportation from India to the USA is.
The Indian Embassy in SF must at least raise an alarm to save the heritage. The MHA banned the movement of these articles from Chandigarh in 2011, and as such, these all appear to have been smuggled out of India."