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.