India has added three sites to its UNESCO tentative list, the register a country must use before it can nominate a property for World Heritage status. The Permanent Delegation of India to UNESCO in Paris announced the additions on 20 October 2026. Two are natural sites in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The third is an archaeological landscape in Chhattisgarh.
The sites are the Karst-mud-volcano Complex of Baratang, the Andaman Subduction Volcanoes, and the Sirpur Cultural and Archaeological Landscape. The delegation thanked the Archaeological Survey of India for its work on the submissions. According to the Nicobar Times, the two Andaman dossiers were filed on 28 September 2026 under the natural heritage category.
A tentative listing is the first formal step. The World Heritage Committee decides on inscription only after a full nomination. UNESCO’s website shows India with 45 properties already inscribed on the World Heritage List.
Mud, caves and a 2025 eruption
Baratang Island lies in the North and Middle Andaman district, north of Sri Vijaya Puram, formerly Port Blair. The listed complex on the island’s southwest combines limestone caves with India’s only active mud volcanoes.
The caves belong to a karst landscape formed as rainwater dissolves limestone. They hold stalactites, stalagmites and underground chambers. The mud volcanoes, known locally as jalki, push out mud, water and gas instead of molten rock.
The site erupted on 2 October 2025 at Jarwa Creek, PTI reported. The discharge built a mound three to four metres high and spread mud over more than 1,000 square metres. Local officials said an eruption of that size was last recorded in 2005.
Shantanu Bhattacharjee, Deputy Director General of the Geological Survey of India, told PTI the mud volcano is driven by gas from decaying organic matter deep underground. He said the October 2025 event appeared linked to tectonic movement. The Forest Department suspended tourist access to the site after the eruption.
Two volcanoes on a plate boundary
The second listing groups Barren Island and Narcondam Island, two volcanic islands in the Andaman Sea. Both sit where the Indian plate meets the Burma plate.
Barren Island is uninhabited and covers 8.34 sq km, about 140 km by sea from Sri Vijaya Puram. It is India’s only active volcano. Its recorded activity goes back to 1787, with eruptions in 1991, 2005, 2017 and November 2022. PTI reported two minor eruptions on 13 and 20 September 2025.
Narcondam lies about 240 km northeast of the capital and is a dormant volcano. It covers 6.8 sq km and is the only home of the Narcondam hornbill. UNESCO’s records describe the bird as having the smallest range of any Asian hornbill species and list it as endangered on the IUCN Red List. Narcondam has appeared on India’s tentative list as a separate entry since 2014.
The pairing gives a nomination one active and one dormant volcano on the same subduction zone. The Nicobar Times notes the islands’ value for research on volcanic processes and on how species evolve in isolation.
Sirpur on the Mahanadi
Sirpur, in Mahasamund district of Chhattisgarh, stands on the bank of the Mahanadi river. The town, known in inscriptions as Shripura, was the capital of Dakshina Kosala under the Panduvamshi kings and later the Somavamshi dynasty. Its monuments span the 5th to 12th centuries.
The best-known structure is the Lakshmana temple, a 7th-century Vishnu temple built in brick and counted among the finest brick temples in India. Its foundation inscription, now held in the Raipur Museum, records that Queen Vasata built it after her husband’s death. She was the mother of King Mahashivagupta Balarjuna, whose reign marked the city’s peak.
Excavations have exposed Hindu temples, Buddhist and Jain monasteries, a 6th-century market complex, palace remains, houses and a water management system. Alexander Cunningham documented the site in 1882. M G Dikshit excavated there in 1953–56, and A K Sharma opened 39 mounds between 2000 and 2011.
Chhattisgarh has pressed for a World Heritage nomination for Sirpur. The listing name, a cultural and archaeological landscape, presents the river, ghats and temple clusters as one setting, a category UNESCO uses for combined works of nature and people.
What comes next
India must now prepare full nomination dossiers for any of the three sites it chooses to put forward. Each dossier has to set out the site’s outstanding universal value, its boundaries and its management plan. UNESCO’s advisory bodies then evaluate the file before the World Heritage Committee decides on inscription.
Narcondam’s 2014 entry was filed under three of UNESCO’s natural criteria, covering geological processes, ongoing ecological processes and habitats for threatened species. The new Andaman listings place both islands and Baratang’s mud volcanoes in the same natural heritage track.
