Bhubaneswar: The Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) has begun work on setting up the ambitious Museum of Urban History that will speaks the story of the capital city's evolution through the years.
After freeing the land for the project at Ganga Nagar, the authorities have began alienating it and constructing a boundary wall to protect it.
On June 1, the authorities demolished a private school that had been encroaching on the identified land for the past three decades.
"The general administration department had last year allotted the land in our favour for construction of the museum, but we couldn't go ahead because a school had encroached on the land and the matter was sub-judice. We eventually won the court case and demolished the structure on the land," said an official of the BSCL.
The BSCL has sought the help of Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) in protecting the land following which the officials went to the site and started constructing a boundary wall.
"We have demolished the school as well as a club building on the land. We have started constructing the boundary wall to protect it," said a development authority official.
The BSCL and the BDA will jointly execute the urban museum project under the Smart City Mission, the concept plan for which has already been prepared by a smart city consultant.
Sources said a tender would be floated shortly to finalise the executor.
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"The museum aims to be a destination dedicated to documenting, restoring and exhibiting this rich history of the city's urban transformation along with its trades, arts, cultural relations, social transformation, innovations, and contribution to Odisha and India from the ancient to the modern civilisation," said the BSCL official.
According to the concept plan, the museum galleries will integrate exhibits that will explain the tangible and intangible aspects of Bhubaneswar's heritage and its journey in transforming into a place of knowledge hub with a special emphasis on the juxtaposition of the ancient and the modern.