The Bruhat Bangalore Mahangara Palike (BBMP) had announced its grandiose plans to set up a Kempegowda Museum and give real meaning to the Suvarna Karnataka celebrations. While the celebrations have come and left, the Palike is yet to keep its promise.
Cut to 2007-08 budget, the then Palike Special Commissioner Gaurav Gupta had made these well-timed remarks: “I am proud to announce the Palike will take up the establishment of Kempegowda Museum in the year of Suvarna Karnataka in honour of the founder statesman of Bangalore City. For this I provide an amount of Rs 5 crore in the budget”.
The budget was presented at the same location identified for the museum: Mayo Hall. But time proved that the Palike would move no further on the project.
For the Palike, the idea of museum has been in the wings for long.  Historian Dr Suryanath Kamath and others were invited to informal meetings on the museum six years ago, but were reserved for the project only in the year 2007-08.
Eternal wait?
Recalled Dr Kamath, “I attended two-three meetings on setting up the museum, which were held when A Ravindra was commissioner of the Palike. Since then there has been no communication from the Palike in this regard.”
He is however convinced of Bangalore’s need for a historical museum that could represent the City’s history and trace its development under different rulers.
A museum could also capture in a capsule the growth of key sectors such as education, industry and other aspects of urban growth. But he wanted some method to the process to make it attractive to the masses.
The Palike’s Welfare Department was assigned the job of executing the project who moved it to the Public Relations department, which in turn passed it on to the East zone of the Palike, in whose limit Mayo Hall falls. But Joint Commissioner (East Zone) S N Nagaraj, assigned for the project execution job, is sure that Mayo Hall was not the suitable choice as the venue.
His explaination was that the Hall is located in a congested place amidst government offices and therefore it cannot attract viewers. “There is no parking place so I am searching for a suitable venue.”