Hyderabad: Pleas to protect rock art paintings at Kokapet

Hyderabad: Telangana BJP leader P Shekhar Rao on Tuesday demanded Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao to stop the destruction of the Paleolithic and Neolithic Era (10,000-years-old rock art paintings at Kokapet in the Greater Hyderabad limits). In a letter to Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, the BJP leader said that the rock art site seems to have been quarried away in the abnormal growth of house building activity encouraged by the real estate boom in the metropolitan city. He said that the State Department of Archaeology and Museums published a book titled "Rock Art sites in Telangana-Art Galleries from the Palaeolithic and Neolithic Era". The rock art is precious at the same time vulnerable.

The Telangana Heritage (protection, preservation, conservation, and maintenance) Act, 2017 (Heritage Act) has been enacted in 2017 to provide for the protection, preservation, conservation and maintenance of tangible and intangible heritage of Telangana, Rao said that the HMDA was clearing the Kokapet Rock Art sites without protecting and realising the importance of the heritage sites. The BJP leader demanded immediate action by directing the HMDA or any other concerned Authority to stop the destruction of the heritage site forthwith and also to take corrective action to restore the historically valuable sites. Otherwise such precious heritage and cultural sites would be destroyed forever, he added in the letter.