Archives: Vol. XXVI No. 18, January 1-15, 2017

Better days for the Fort?

By The Editor

At long last there are signs that some long promised action regarding Fort St George will finally materialise. If newspaper reports are to be believed, the Army is finally moving out of the Fort, or at least talking about it in right earnest. With that there should be no impediment to the Archaeological Survey taking over all the buildings that are not in occupation by the Government and Legislature of Tamil Nadu. There will also be a small pocket occupied by the Navy and it is to be hoped that they will follow the example set by the Army. Will all this mean better days for the Fort? Only time will tell

This is not the first time that the Army has spoken about vacating the Fort. The same statements were made a few years ago, when a secret passage was discovered under the moat. The Army and the ASI had then jointly emphasised the necessity to clean the moat and improve the maintenance of the place, both of which was to be done once the former removed their presence from the Fort. It is however unclear as to how the two actions were in any way related. Subsequent to this, nothing much happened on vacating or cleaning, but the Army made it to the news for the wrong reasons when it began undertaking drilling work near the King’s Barracks. The ASI protested, but the work went ahead.