LAHORE: The Punjab government on Thursday denied the civil society allegation that officials misled the World Heritage Committee (WHC) about the Orange Line project during its 41st session recently held in Poland.

“In fact, the claim of the civil society at a press conference on Wednesday is incorrect,” the government says in a rebuttal issued through a handout.

Members of the civil society on Wednesday lambasted the Punjab government for cutting a sorry figure at the 41st Unesco’s WHC session on July 8 in Poland by not inviting the Reactive Monitoring Mission to visit the Lahore Orange Line Metro Train Project (Shalamar Gardens section) on the pretext of case’s proceedings in the Supreme Court, and not submitting the Visual Impact Assessment report of the scheme to the committee.

Denying the allegations, the Director General Archaeology blamed the civil society for “feeding wrong information to the World Heritage Centre (Secretariat) which became the basis for the Centre to reach the draft decision (of dropping Lahore Fort and Shalamar Gardens from the World Heritage List).

As a matter of fact, the Pakistan State Party participated in the session of the WHC at Krakow (Poland) between July 2-12. Imrana Tiwana of the Lahore Conservation Society also addressed the session.

The State Party, the handout says, presented its case which was based on facts stemming from technical data and conclusions. “The press release issued on Wednesday only reflects the frustration of the civil society as its point of view was not accepted by the WHC,” it says.

“The draft decisions put up by the World Heritage Centre regarding suspension of work on the project, effecting a change in alignment in front of Shalamar Gardens and placing it on the list of World Heritage in Danger were rejected by the committee. The Committee requested the State Party to urgently complete and share with it the Visual Impact Study as decided by the WHC in its 40th session and invite the Reactive Monitoring Mission immediately after the decision of the Supreme Court to examine the project and discuss it with the relevant authorities.”

It may be noted, says the handout, that the scope of the mission is restricted to reviewing the management and protection arrangements only. Their proposed role to discuss alignment change was specifically rejected and deleted from the decisions.

It further says, “the World Heritage Centre had put up incorrect concern in the draft decisions that a No-Objection Certificate (NOC) was issued by the Archaeology Department. The World Heritage Committee rejected this concern as well and decided to delete it from the decisions and noted that the Reactive Monitoring Mission will be invited immediately after the decision of the Supreme Court is announced.”

Published in Dawn, July 21st, 2017