LAHORE, Aug 23: The City District Government hosted a lunch reception for a delegation of the Defence Staff College at the Diwan-i-Aam of the Lahore Fort on Monday in clear violation of the Antiquities Act of 1975 and certain dictates of Unesco in regard to world heritage monuments.

About 150 members of the delegation, including some foreign nationals, were entertained at the Mughal-era building on the first day of the Punjab Archaeology Directorate's formal take over of the monument.

The reception was hosted apparently without permission of any authority because the CDG probably did not need it after the federal government relinquished the charge of the Lahore Fort and the Shalamar Gardens.

City District Nazim Mian Amer himself was present at the reception along with Punjab Archaeology Department Director-General Ms Farzana Qureshi and director Shahbaz Ahmad Khan. None of them is said to have apprised the CDG of the laws and restraints on holding a public banquet at a protected monument, which is on the world heritage list.

The federal government used to prevent such public functions effectively because its permission was required for such a feast. Nevertheless, the CDG hosted the reception in the presence of senior officers of the Punjab Archaeology Directorate, who could only keep a silence and allow the function to be held.

It is pertinent to mention here that Punjab Culture Secretary Taimoor Azmat Usman made a solemn pledge at a seminar in Lahore on July 6 that no public functions would be allowed to be held at any protected monument even if the Punjab took control of prestigious Mughal-era monuments.

The provincial archaeology directorate was given the control of the Lahore Fort after a notification in the middle of July, but formal change of hands took another month or so because it prepared a complete inventory of all the artifacts and other articles on display at various galleries of the citadel.

Once it was completed, the federal government's establishment was confined to the Pakistan Institute of Archaeological Training and Research (PIATR) located in the eastern portion and the Punjab government walked in on Monday as the new custodian.

Unesco has already been agitating with Islamabad to take all administrative measures like creating buffer zones and clearing the Lahore Fort and the Shalamar Gardens of encroachments as a precondition for the world technical and financial assistance for the upkeep of the world heritage monuments. It also politely told the government in the past that the two prime monuments could lose their status if its conditions were not met.

Unesco has already listed the fort and the Shalamar Gardens as 'endangered' monuments, which means that they be given a special attention at the highest level of the government.

The world body has also taken exception to all the public functions held in the past and in 1990, it censured the federal government for failing to implement its own laws against such a misuse of the Lahore Fort.