Santiniketan proposed for inclusion in Unesco heritage list

India’s Union Minister for Culture and Tourism G Kishan Reddy has said that Santiniketan has been recommended for inclusion in the Unesco World Heritage List by an international advisory body, reports Hindustan Times.

"Great news for India on the Jayanti of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. Santiniketan, West Bengal has been recommended for inscription to the World Heritage List by ICOMOS, the advisory body to Unesco World Heritage Centre," Reddy tweeted on Tuesday night.

"It will formally be announced in the World Heritage Committee meeting to be held at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in September 2023," the tweet added.

Santiniketan is a town in West Bengal’s Birbhum district where Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore spent much of his life. Visva-Bharati in Santiniketan, which is Bengal’s only central university, was set up by Tagore in 1921.

The France-based International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) is an international non-governmental organisation that comprises professionals, experts, and representatives from local authorities, companies and heritage organisations and is dedicated to the conservation and enhancement of the architectural and landscape heritage around the world.