IT HAS always been the most pukka of perks — an official residence in one of the sprawling white bungalows built by the British Raj’s leading architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens.

Ever since India’s independence in 1947, government ministers, MPs, generals and judges have lived in the splendid isolation of grace-and-favour homes in Delhi’s leafy Lutyens Bungalow Zone.

But Indian authorities are now introducing an unprecedented crackdown on residents who they say are ruining these architectural gems with illegal modern additions ranging from offices to swimming pools.

The Ministry of Urban Development has issued notices to 150 residents, including several Cabinet ministers, warning them to take down all unauthorised structures.

“The department knows exactly what has been built,” a Government source told The Times. “The occupants have three months to comply. If they don’t, the department will forcibly remove these structures.”

Preservationists say that it is doubtful that the ministry will back up its threat in an area that is home to some of the most wealthy and powerful people in a notoriously corrupt country.

Among those issued with notices are reported to be five Cabinet ministers — including the ministers for commerce and railways — and, ironically, two ministers for urban development.

Campaigners have welcomed the Government’s most serious effort to date to protect Lutyens’s Delhi from unregulated development amid a property boom in the capital.

The crackdown comes just two months after Sanjay Singhal, an Indian steel magnate, bought a house in the bungalow zone from the Dutch Government for a record 1.5 billion rupees (£17 million). “We welcome any measure that will result in the recognition of the Lutyens Bungalow Zone’s historical importance,” said Mervyn Miller, architectural adviser to the British-based Lutyens Trust. “It is an integral part of the city, as well as the most extensive garden city every built,” he said. “This area acts as Delhi’s lung.”

Lutyens spent two decades designing and building imperial New Delhi after it was chosen to replace Calcutta as the Indian capital in 1912.

He designed the parliament, the government buildings and the palatial 340-room Viceroy’s palace, which is now called Rashtrapati Bhavan and serves as the Indian President’s official residence. Indian and foreign preservationist groups have been campaigning for years for official recognition of the area’s architectural importance.

In 2002 the World Monuments Fund in New York listed the zone among the 100 most endangered architectural sites in the world.

The following year, the Lutyens Trust sent a 42-member team to lobby the Government.

Since then, the Government has tried to clamp down sporadically on illegal construction, but it has never issued official notices to so many residents. “It’s being taken more seriously this time,” said the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage.

EDWIN LUTYENS

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