Two sets of UT heritage furniture auctioned in US

Two sets of heritage furniture of the City Beautiful were auctioned in the US for Rs 18.56 lakh yesterday.

Ajay Jagga, a member of the Heritage Items Protection Cell of the UT Administration, stated that a set of desk and chair, a file rack and a pair of nightstands designed by Pierre Jeanneret, a Swiss architect, were put up for auction in Los Angeles by an auction house, Los Angeles Modern Auctions (LAMA), against a reserve price of Rs 29.23 lakh on July 17.

The file rack and the pair of nightstands were auctioned for Rs 18.56 lakh despite the Indian Embassy in San Francisco having been intimated about the auction in advance.

Jagga stated that he had submitted a representation to Dr K Srikar Reddy, Consul General, Indian Embassy, San Francisco, on July 14 regarding the auction to be conducted by the LAMA in Los Angeles on July 17.

He said the Indian Embassy was requested to at least raise the alarm to save the heritage. However, it appeared that no action was taken to challenge that auction, as two of the three items put up for the auction were sold, he said.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has banned the movement of these articles of Chandigarh in 2011 and as such, these all, appears to have been smuggled out of India, he added. “Such auctions can be stopped only through diplomatic channels,” said Jagga.