MUMBAI: Ending a yearlong wait, the state government has finally announced the appointment of a new heritage committee for Mumbai. Former chief secretary V Ranganathan will chair the 10-member panel for a tenure of three years.

The urban development department shared the list of panel members with TOI. The ex-officio members of the Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee have been retained on the panel that also comprises structural engineers from IIT Mumbai and VJTI. Among them are the director of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (Prince of Wales Museum) along with the chief architect of the PWD and a civic representative not below the rank of chief engineer. Environmentalist Cyrus Guzder, who figured on the previous committee, will serve another term. City historian Arvind Jamsandekar has been nominated as has been conservation architect Abha Narain Lambah.

Ranganathan was informed of his appointment by civic chief Sitaram Kunte on Saturday. "I have earlier been heritage committee chairman of Mahabaleshwar and Panchgani and chaired the high-level monitoring committee declaring Matheran and the surrounding region as an eco-sensitive zone. India has such a variegated history that needs to be protected and preserved," he says. He has been on the other side of the fence too as the main organizer of a construction and infrastructure show in 2008.

The new chairman says his team has an onerous task ahead given the absence of a functional heritage committee since July 2011, when the tenure of the previous body expired. This is believed to be the longest gap since the Mumbai heritage regulations were formulated in 1995. "I am told that a number of proposals are pending, so my immediate task will be to clear pendency," he says.

Ranganathan hopes to strike a balance between the city's need for conservation and development—a tightrope walk that often puts the committee in the line of fire of both sectors. "There is a line of thought which says that private owners who conserve their heritage property should be rewarded; simultaneously, we cannot allow heritage to needlessly come in the way of development."

Inevitably, the committee will face pressure from the builders' lobby whose associations have often protested its strictures. "Political pressure has never figured in my calculations," the chairman says.