Sir,
So far, several views by different people and organisations have been expressed on demolishing or retaining the heritage structures like Devaraja Market and Lansdowne Building, which are located at prime locations in Central Business District of Mysuru city. There are pros and cons with either options.
However, safety of life of tenants or hundreds of people, including foreign tourists, who visit these places (mainly Devaraja Market) on daily basis is not thought by any, if any untoward thing happens to these old structures. If these buildings are retained as such in its original form and if they collapse at a later date by way of natural act, who will bear the responsibility, other than paying a few lakh rupees of public money as compensation to the deceased by either MCC or State Government, for the loss of life is not clear.
Safety of life should be given priority as it is not possible to bring the life of the dead back. Hence, I fully agree with the views of Mubasher Mirza (SOM dated Mar.9, 2019) to rebuild these structures pro-actively, retaining the same design and grandeur of the original structures with ample parking space and other public amenities at their basement, by providing alternative space for the tenants during the reconstruction period (in a shortest period possible), which looks like a good proposition to this issue.
– Dr. S. V. N. Vijayendra, Roopanagar, 10.3.2019
We would not be having this debate about demolishing or renovating Devaraja Market, if this structure was properly maintained over the years. It has also been said that the tenants also contributed to the decay of this building by making unsafe and unauthorized alterations to the building structure within their rented shops. This, I beleive, is also the case with Lansdowne building.
Having said that, I agree with the author that safety of tenants is important. I thnk it is possible to rebuild the market while retaining its original facade. Even then maintainence of the building is inportant. I wonder how many of the existing old buildings, like the MCC office, is structurally sound?