Udupi: A 17-year-old youth from Kota in Udupi district Pradeesh K. has made an attempt to create a Guinness world record for the “longest drawing by an individual” at the Viveka PU College at Kota in Udupi district here on Friday by doing a drawing, which is 1,174.28 metres long. He worked for 33 hours and 58 minutes from November 7 to 10 for the record.

At present, the record for the “longest drawing by an individual” of 660.222 metres is held by Parimalakanth Kumaravijayan of Tamil Nadu. He did the drawing on October 12, 2016 and it was declared a record in January 2017. Pradeesh worked on a 10-cm wide paper roll, which was about 40 metres long. He used 25-and-a-half such rolls in the last four days for his drawing. Only pen, colour pencil, crayons, charcoal and ink were used. However, the Guinness recognition, if Pradeesh’s record is accepted, will be known only in February 2018.

The major theme of his drawing was Clean India or Swachh Bharat divided into sub themes. Since the representatives of the Guinness World Records were not attending the event, it has been fully video-graphed and would be sent to them. Four persons witnessed the drawing on all four days and certified it. They are Ramesh Rao, senior artist, D.V. Hegde, Assistant Executive Engineer, Public Works Department, Kodi Gopal Kharvi, a Guinness record holder, and Karje Balakrishna Shetty, notary.

Son of K.S. Prasad, an agriculturist at Pethri, and Prasanna P. Bhat, home-maker, Pradeesh is a student of II PU Commerce at Viveka PU College. He told press persons here that he was inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign for a Clean India.

“I selected this topic because I want proper implementation of Swachh Bharat scheme. The youth should get inspired and get involved in it,” he said.