Defacing no more: Barabati fort in Cuttack

Cuttack, Sept. 30: History of this heritage city will soon be scripted on its walls, which otherwise witness ugly posters and poll graffiti round the year.

By the end of October, people can see friezes depicting its 1,000-year-old history as part of a beautification drive launched by the Cuttack Municipal Corporation (CMC).

Cuttack — already old by most of the Indian cities like Calcutta, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad were founded — was Orissa’s historical capital until 1956. Rulers of the Somavamsi dynasty shifted their capital from Bhubaneswar (then Tosali) to Cuttack after Nrupa Keshari founded it in 989. A capital almost continuously for nine centuries, the city was the seat of sovereign power who ruled Orissa.

CMC commissioner Sushil Lohani — credited with plans to change the landscape by highlighting vignettes of the city’s past on its walls — said the process of scouting local artists was already on.

The civic body plans to complete the project with money from private sources by the time of Balijatra in the first week of November. “If everything goes as per schedule, the history of Cuttack will take shape on the city walls in another month,” Lohani told The Telegraph.

In the first phase, sources said, work would be taken up on exterior walls of government buildings. After these are completed, the focus would shift to exterior walls of private buildings and structures at strategic locations. “If the property owners say no (to civic body paintings), ‘stick no bill’ stickers will be made mandatory for them,” he said.

“We don’t want defacement. We won’t have ugly posters and graffiti,” he added.

The administration is wary of disfigurement of walls at Badambadi bus terminus, high court, railway station, Barabati stadium, Cantonment Road, Medical Road, Circuit House, Sahid Bhavan, Sri Ram Chandra Bhavan, Link Road overbridge and extensive stretches of the Ring Road along Kanthjodi river.

Hegemony of private advertisers on major portions of the walls in these locations is also proving to be a bane for the beautification project undertaken by the civic body.

The sources said CMC officials involved in the project have been brushing up on the town’s historical associations which are woven around with the Barabati fort — the citadel of the Ganga Dynasty (1112-1435), Suryavamsi Gajapatis (1436-1540), Bhois (1542-1560) and Mukundadev, the last great Hindu ruler of Orissa (1560-68).

Cuttack remained the capital of the Turko-Afghan (1568-90), Mughals (1591-1707), Nazims of Bengal (1707-51), Marathas (1752-1803) and the British in Orissa from 1803.

It continued as the capital in post-independent India till Bhubaneswar became the new capital in 1958.