BENGALURU: With an installation of two horses, costing Rs 2.8 lakh, at Sir M Visvesvaraya Terminal in Baiyappanahalli vandalised by passengers coming to the station, the Bengaluru Railway Division is now rethinking its plans to beautify the place. The broken pieces have been taken by the art agency for repairs, a railway source said.
“People put their luggage on these art pieces placed in the concourse area and sometimes, they also sleep under them. After the art installation suffered some damage, we put up a barricade around it. But vandalism continued and the installations have suffered major damage now. Both the horse figures have been taken by its creator, Artwaley, for restoration works,” the sources added.
Asked if the installation would not be damaged after the restoration work, Additional Divisional Railway Manager, Administration, Bengaluru Division, Kusuma Hariprasad, told TNIE, “It has been decided that after restoration, the horses would be shifted to KSR Bengaluru City railway station. There were plans to have two of them at KSR station earlier and with these two relocated there, it will have four horse installations.”
The bigger fallout is that the division that had listed a whole lot of artworks to be installed at the terminus may not go ahead with it. “Instead, we might be installing them at KSR and the 15 stations within the Bengaluru Division which will be modernised under the Amrit Bharat Station Scheme,” he added.
A massive Channapatna top apart from other huge toys, sculpture of a train, Gandhiji & Charkha, a Make in India sculpture and a Robot Namaskar sculpture figure among the installations planned for SMVT. Commercial operations began at this terminal, modelled on the Bengaluru airport, on June 6, 2022. Since then, it has emerged as a busy station with many long-distance trains, particularly to the North East and Eastern India arriving and departing from here.