Foundation stones for two projects that have been dragging on for years were unveiled by urban development and municipal affairs minister Firhad Hakim along with fire and emergency services minister and Bidhannagar MLA Sujit Bose on Tuesday.
One is the building of Rabindra Bhavan, now renamed Rabindraangan by the chief minister, that had been announced way back when the Left-led board governed the erstwhile Bidhannagar Municipality. The foundation stone of the plot had been laid by the then civic chief Biswajiban Majumdar. Then in 2013, the Trinamul Congress-led municipality had installed a Tagore statue at the plot and had again announced that a centre dedicated to Tagore would be built here.
The other “new” project that was “unveiled” is an old age home behind Matri Sadan in EE Block. This too had been in the backburner for several years and construction is yet to kick off.
The programme was held on the plot opposite Central Park in FE Block where a centre of excellence devoted to Rabindranath Tagore is being built. The mayor of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation Krishna Chakraborty was present at the launch along with councillors and mayoral council members of the civic body.
Hakim “unveiled” the plan for building the centre on Tagore in the second phase in which construction of the ground floor till the third will be started. This centre has been rechristened as Rabindraangan by chief minister Mamata Banerjee, Hakim said. “This will be a revolutionary centre that will teach cultural values to the generations to come,” he said.
The centre will have an auditorium as well as classrooms for cultural studies and a hostel for foreign students on exchange programmes.
There will be digital archives and an e-library featuring the life and art of Rabindranath Tagore alongwith a cafeteria.
Hakim lauded Krishna Chakraborty for setting aside funds from the profits earned by the civic body by organising the Bidhannagar Mela (Utsav).
According to Chakraborty, they have raised a corpus fund of nearly Rs 4 crore earned from the profits registered by organising the fair.
Another civic official pipped the project cost to be nearly Rs 50 crore.
“We have already initiated the tender process and construction of laying the foundation and aligning the utilities is on,” said Chakraborty.
The tender for the construction of the old age home on the other hand is yet to be called.
A civic official said that the detailed project report is yet to be prepared and submitted to the municipal affairs department for clearance.