The soulless dossier prepared by a CEPT University team led by Prof R J Vasavada, who spent nearly four years on documenting the heritage of the 600-year-old walled city behind closed doors, has been termed "unfit' for submission to Unesco in Paris by ASI's Advisory Committee on World Heritage Matters (ACWHM).

ACWHM has listed flaws that include spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, incomplete conservation and management plan. It also says that the document sets an unconvincing pitch for outstanding universal values (OUV) for the city.

Among other glaring gaps are inadequate details on pre-Sultanate and Sultanate eras' influence on walled city's urban archaeology. The dossier claimed that the "walled city has a potential of outstanding universal value (OUV)", rather than being assertively saying that "it has OUV". Also missing is a clear explanation on Ahmedabad's main world heritage pitch - "how interchange of values (Sultanate, Gaekwadi, Mughal and British influence) contributed to the city's architecture and planning.

ACWHM has also pointed out that there was no binding historical narrative to the overall framework for historic city management plan. It also pointed out that the city had no convincing conservation plan.