A parliamentary panel has recommended setting up a “dedicated cultural heritage squad” for the recovery of stolen antiquities, with a team of officers who can be trained on various aspects of retrieval, as followed by various countries.
 
The department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism, and Culture said this in a report tabled in both Houses of Parliament yesterday.
 
The committee suggested that the government could set up a multi-departmental task force to speed up the retrieval process including senior officials from the Ministries of Home Affairs and External Affairs, Archaeological Survey of India and senior scholars and experts. The team may be trained on various aspects as per the requirement of set procedures of retrieval, followed by different countries.
 
The committee also recommended exploring the possibility of involving state governments and relevant bodies such as the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), National Culture Fund (NCF) and the French Institute of Pondicherry, among others, in the process of documentation of India’s antiquities,