CONSERVATION AND PROTECTION OF MONUMENTS OF NATIONAL IMPORTANCE

• India's centrally protected monuments are managed by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) under the Ministry of Culture, governed by the AMASR Act, 1958.
• The corpus stands at 3,686 protected monuments/archaeological sites as of March 2026.
• High-yield UPSC area: intersects Culture (GS-I), Governance (GS-II), and Environment/Tourism (GS-III); recurrent Prelims fodder on Acts, agencies and numbers.