CUTTACK: The Orissa high court has given Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC) four weeks’ time to act on the demand that British-era Christ Collegiate School be declared a heritage building and one fit for conservation. The court issued the direction on Wednesday while disposing of a PIL filed on March 18.The school building — a 137-year-old structure and a classic example of Indo-European architecture — has been lying in a decrepit condition and has been declared unsafe three years back. On August 14 last year, city-based lawyer Shivsankar Mohanty, through a memorandum, had urged the commissioner-cum-chairman of CMC’s heritage conservation committee to declare Christ Collegiate School as a ‘heritage building’ under the provisions of Orissa Municipal Corporation Act, 2003.Mohanty moved the high court after his representation elicited no response. “After a brief hearing, the division bench of Chief Justice K S Jhaveri and Justice K R Mohapatra disposed of the petition with a direction to the commissioner of Cuttack Municipal Corporation to act within four weeks on the representation submitted to him on August 14, 2018,” Mohanty said.The memorandum said there was need to preserve the school building ‘for the people at large and posterity’ as it was a testimony to Indo-European architecture marked by a combination of features of the late renaissance period.It added that the office of the executive engineer roads and buildings (Cuttack division) under the public works department had through a letter to the concerned authorities on February 20, 2016, warned that “due to dilapidated condition the school building may collapse any time, hence no students and staff should be allowed to sit in the building”.But the school, a government-aided educational institution managed by a Christian body, kept functioning from the building, the memorandum stated.Dr W D Stewart, a civil surgeon, had constructed the building at Mission Road in 1883 for his residence. In 1887, he gifted the property to the Baptist Mission to start a school — the Baptist Mission School. It was named as Christ Collegiate School in 1950.As things stand now, the walls of the British-era edifice are cracking, trees jutting out of the building and plasters peeling off the ceiling due to lack of maintenance.The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage had submitted a proposal to the state culture department in 2014 to repair and renovate the school building at an estimated cost of Rs 2.4 crore. The proposal has since been pending with the department.

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