The Chandigarh Administration has written to the Ministry of External Affairs seeking urgent diplomatic intervention to stall the auction of eight Pierre Jeanneret-designed heritage furniture pieces at Wright Design Auction House, Chicago, scheduled for August 13, and has registered an FIR in connection with the suspected theft and illegal export of the items — replicating the legal and diplomatic framework that successfully halted auctions in Paris in June and Barcelona in July.Secretary Culture, Chandigarh Administration, Syed Abid Rashid Shah, addressed a formal communication to the Additional Secretary, UNES, Ministry of External Affairs, accessed by The Tribune, seeking immediate suspension of the Wright auction and initiating steps for repatriation if the items are found to have been unlawfully removed from government institutions. The MEA has been asked to engage the Indian Embassy in the US on priority.Chandigarh Police registered FIR at Police Station West, Sector 11, under Sections 305(e) and 61(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, on a complaint by Director Cultural Affairs, Chandigarh Administration, Naveen Rattu, with Panjab University, Chandigarh, recorded as the place of occurrence.The eight lotsThe auction catalogue indicates that the eight items bear institutional markings of multiple Chandigarh government establishments, with the combined estimate of the lot standing at USD 49,000 to USD 63,000 — approximately Rs 41 lakh to Rs 53 lakh at current exchange rates.The institutional markings span five distinct government establishments — Administrative Buildings of the Chandigarh UT Administration, the Directorate of Public Instructions Haryana (DPI-H), Panjab University, PGIMER and the MLA Hostel of the Punjab PWD — indicating that the furniture was drawn from multiple institutions before entering the international market.Complaint & FIRThe complaint was filed by Director Cultural Affairs, Chandigarh Administration, Naveen Rattu, addressed to the Senior Superintendent of Police, Chandigarh. The complaint stated that the auction catalogue descriptions and institutional markings raised serious questions regarding the chain of custody, legality of disposal, export permissions and ownership history of the items, and that it was apprehended the furniture had been removed from government institutions without lawful authority. The complaint described the removal and sale abroad as “prima facie illegal and criminal in nature” and sought registration of an FIR to initiate a recovery process.Administration’s letter to MEAIn its communication to the MEA, the Administration invoked Chandigarh’s UNESCO World Heritage status — the Capitol Complex is inscribed as part of “The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier — An Outstanding Contribution to the Modern Movement” — and argued that the proposed auction was in direct contradiction of UNESCO’s transboundary heritage framework and the UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects. It sought suspension of the auction pending ownership verification, preservation of items during investigation, provenance verification through concerned institutions, repatriation assistance and identification of any other Chandigarh heritage pieces circulating through international markets.Punjab Governor and Chandigarh Administrator Gulab Chand Kataria, who has been personally monitoring the issue since taking suo motu cognisance of The Tribune’s series of reports on successive overseas auctions, reiterated the Administration’s position. “Whether it is Paris, Barcelona or Chicago, our stand is the same — Chandigarh’s heritage furniture was created for the people of this city and this country and we will not allow it to be sold abroad through illegal means. We will do anything and everything to stop these sales and to bring back every item illegally taken out of Chandigarh,” he told The Tribune.Pattern & precedentWright Design Auction House, Chicago, is not new to this controversy. It is the same auction house that sold seven Chandigarh heritage items, including MLA Hostel furniture, for Rs 1.16 crore on June 4 this year — a sale that prompted Punjab Vidhan Sabha Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan to seek a custody report from the Chandigarh Administration. Wright has been a regular conduit for Chandigarh furniture for well over a decade, with heritage activist Ajay Jagga, member of the UT Heritage Items Protection Cell, having flagged the Wright sales repeatedly since 2013.Jagga, whose sustained two-decade campaign of tracking international auction listings and writing to the MEA, Ministry of Culture and Indian missions abroad has been the thread running through every intervention in this series, flagged the Wright listing and alerted the Administration and the Centre, as he has done in each previous case. It was Jagga’s representations ahead of the Paris auction in June that set in motion the chain of events leading to the first-ever stalling of an overseas Chandigarh heritage furniture sale on June 25 — followed by the Barcelona stalling in July. Both breakthroughs came after the Administration registered FIRs and formally approached the MEA on the legal framework of active criminal proceedings combined with UNIDROIT and UNESCO obligations — the same framework now deployed for the Wright auction.The Linen Chest in tomorrow’s sale carries the marking MLA (H) PB PWD — Punjab PWD’s MLA Hostel — placing it in the same institutional category as the chairs sold in Chicago on June 4 that triggered the Speaker’s intervention. The DPI (H) marking on the Dining Chair indicates it originated from the Directorate of Public Instructions, Haryana — adding Haryana government property to the list of institutional sources now surfacing at Wright.What nextWith the auction scheduled for tomorrow, the window for diplomatic intervention is narrow. The Indian Embassy in Washington and the relevant US authorities would need to be activated by the MEA tonight for any pre-auction action to be possible. Whether the Paris-Barcelona model — FIR plus formal MEA communication plus UNIDROIT invocation — can be executed at the same pace across the Atlantic in under 24 hours will determine whether tomorrow’s Wright sale proceeds or becomes the third overseas auction of Chandigarh heritage furniture to be stalled.As of the time of going to press, no confirmation of intervention from the MEA or the Indian Embassy in the US was available.The Tribune has sought responses from the MEA and the Indian Embassy in Washington. Responses are awaited.