Suman Chakraborti | TNN
Kolkata: After years of reluctance, Bidhannagar Municipality has finally found a plot of land to set up a Rabindra Bhavan at Salt Lake.
The bhavan will be set up on a 40 cottah plot in FE Block near the municipality building. The project was approved at a recent meeting of the municipality’s board of councillors. Municipality chairperson Anita Mandal said the dispute over the plot has been resolved. “The proposal was approved in our board meeting. We’ll now engage architects to prepare a model based on which the Rabindra Bhavan will be set up,” she said. The cost for the project will also be estimated.
At present, there is the Rabindra-Okakura Bhavan, an Indo-Japanese cultural centre beside City Centre in Salt Lake. It was inaugurated by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the presence of chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. However, there has
been a demand for a bhavan dedicated to Tagore and meant for research on the Nobel laureate’s works.
According to plans, the bhavan will be a three-storey structure with an auditorium and several other facilities. It will display works of Tagore and there will be opportunities for scholars and students alike to do research work.
The project was planned during the previous Left-run civic board’s tenure following proposals from residents that the township should have such a platform where everything on Tagore would come under one roof. However, since then, the project had remained on paper for various reasons.
First, there was a problem with the plot that the state urban development department had given to the civic authorities. After measurement, civic engineers had then said that the plot was a triangular one and was not suitable for constructing the bhavan.
The civic authorities requested the state government to reconsider and earmark another plot.
