NEW DELHI: Encroachments and rapid urbanisation have led to the ‘disappearance’ of 24 Protected Monuments in India over the years, Union minister of culture Mahesh Sharma said in Parliament on Monday. The sites and structures, the minister added, remain untraceable.

Sharma was responding to Lok Sabha questions on whether a large number of historical and protected structures in the country had been encroached upon by individuals or groups, and if the Centre had conducted a survey to ascertain the numbers of monuments that had gone missing.

Responding to their queries, minister Mahesh Sharma said UP tops the list of most missing monuments with 11 structures or sites that have disappeared. He also said the ruins of the Copper Temple in Arunachal Pradesh, the guns of Emperor Sher Shah in Assam’s Tinsukia district, Bara Khamba Cemetery in Delhi, and the ruins of Fort Bamanpukur in West Bengal’s Nadia district are among some of the monuments that have disappeared and that could not be traced following their disappearance.

The minister listed a total of eight centrally Protected Monuments that had been encroached upon, and which were cleared in part over the last five years. Sharma’s list included the Asafi Imambara in Lucknow, a mosque at Sakhakheda in Maharashtra, Mahadev Temple, Chaiturgarh Fort, Dantenshwari Devi Temple at Chattisgarh, D’Eremao Cemetery in Delhi, Mosque of Sarai Alavardi Khan in Haryana and Virupaksha Temple in Hampi, Karnataka.

According to the list, other untraceable monuments are in Haryana, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttarkhand and MP.

Conservationists in ASI have attributed the missing status of monuments to urbanisation as well as encroachment.