 |
| The foundation stone stands at the site where the art gallery was supposed to come up. Picture by Badrika Nath Das |
Cuttack, July 17: An art gallery, the foundation of which chief minister Naveen Patnaik laid nearly two years ago, has remained on the drawing board for want of funds.
The project, supposed to come up near Saheed Bhavan here, was planned by the municipal corporation,
“The proposed art gallery entails an expenditure of nearly Rs 1 crore. We need funds from the state government to start the project,” municipal commissioner Nihar Ranjan Mohapatra said.
“An estimate has been submitted to the government. The project will be executed soon after the funds are released,” Mohapatra said.
The Creative Artists’ Group had proposed construction of the art gallery. The corporation had taken up the project and the foundation stone was laid on August 31, 2011.
“The gallery was supposed to preserve art and encourage local and state artists. It is unfortunate that the project has made no progress so far,” said Sashikant Rout, a member of the Creative Artists’ Group.
Noted cartoonist Shilpi Ashok alleged: “The art gallery project is a pretence to encourage artists. It has remained a non-starter because of lack of sincerity on the part of the corporation.”
The civic body plans to set up the art gallery to showcase the culture and tradition of the city as well as portray the lives of illustrious sons of Odisha. But the bids invited and received by the civic body for construction of the art gallery have failed to receive government approval.
The civic body had submitted bids thrice. Expression of interest was invited for civil works with tender values pegged at Rs 62.30 lakh and Rs 68.60 lakh in 2012. But the government had rejected these on all three occasions.
The government did not approve as in all three instances the bid was single in nature (only one party had responded), a source said.
“We will invite fresh expression of interest/tender for construction of the art gallery soon after the required funds are released by the government,” a corporation official said.