Cuttack: The civic body plans to depict the city's historic past on its walls.
If the proposal materialises, paintings depicting Cuttack's past would replace posters and graffiti that dot city walls. Cuttack had existed for a long time before Calcutta, Mumbai and Chennai and Hyderabad were founded.
Municipal commissioner Bikash Ranjan Mohapatra said a plan to change the city landscape by highlighting vignettes of the past was being considered. "It's part of a decision to showcase the city's history. The proposal will be shortly placed before the municipal council for approval under the beautification project. We will follow it up by scouting local artists," he said.
Mohapatra conceded that the proposal had languished since 2009. The civic administration was wary of disfiguring walls along the national highway passing through the city, major thoroughfares and institutions and extensive stretches of the Ring Road along the Kathajodi.
Hegemony of private advertisers on major portions of walls also poses a difficulty .
The project envisages taking up work on exterior walls of government buildings in the first phase. Exterior walls of private buildings and structures at strategic locations would be considered in the next phase.
If property owners declined the civic body's offer, pasting of "Stick No Bills" stickers would be made mandatory for them, the proposal underlines. "Our aim is to stop defacement," Mohapatra said.
Civic officials have been brushing up on the city's historical associations, woven around the Barabati Fort - the citadel of the Ganga dynasty (1112-1435), Suryavamsi Gajapatis (1436-1540), Bhois (1542-1560) and Mukundadev, Odisha's last great Hindu ruler (1560-68).
It remained the capital of the Turko-Afghans (1568-90), Mughals (1591-1707), Nazims of Bengal (1707-51), Marathas (1752-1803) and the British in Odisha from 1803. It continued as the capital till 1958 before it was shifted to Bhubaneswar.
A Somavamsi ruler shifted the capital from Bhuban-eswar (then Tosali) to Cuttack after the city's supposed founding by Nrupa Keshari in 989AD.
A capital for almost nine centuries, Cuttack was the seat of almost every sovereign power that ruled Odisha.
