Core drilling of Konark temple wall begins ahead of sand removal

Bhubaneswar: The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) on Sunday began drilling a hole on the Jagamohan at Konark’s Sun Temple as a part of its decision to evacuate sand from the 13th century monument.The hole is being drilled at a point between the first and the second pidha on the western wall of the Jagamohan (assembly hall of the monument), which was filled with sand and sealed by the Britishers in 1903 under the instruction of the then Lt Governor Sir John Woodburn to prevent the monument from crumbling.The step is being taken five years after the then Union culture minister Prahlad Singh Patel asked ASI to evacuate sand to see the extent of damage that the sealed damp interiors would have done to the monument.

In the last five years, the ASI constructed a platform near the western wall which will be used to evacuate sand without damaging the structure.An ASI official said core drilling is being done on the western wall of the Jagamohan to find out the length and strength of the inner core of the wall. “The next step will be to create a pocket or a frame through which a tunnel will be dug out to remove the sand. This is a preliminary assessment of the wall because there are no records about its condition and stability,” he added.

The core drilling is being done at the same point which the Britishers had used to pour in sand and seal the structure.The last such attempt to drill the Jagamohan was made by former DG of ASI, Dr Debala Mitra, in the mid-1950s. Dr Mitra had found through a study that rain water seepage into the closed interiors has been leading to formation of harmful moss due to dampness and this has been resulting in decomposition of khondalite stones used in the monument.This was corroborated by the Roorkee-based Central Building Research Institute which examined structural damages in the Jagamohan in 2019 and found that sand had settled by 12ft and stones from the top of the Jagamohan were falling. Subsequently, experts had suggested Patel for removal of sand to assess the damage to interior walls.