Bhubaneswar: The capital city of Odisha, Bhubaneswar, will celebrate its 74th Foundation Day today.
Reportedly, the special occasion was celebrated on PMG Square in Bhubaneswar. Odisha Assembly speaker Surya Narayan Patro attended the meeting as the chief guest. Police Commissioner Soumendra Priyadarshi, newly elected Bhubaneswar Mayor Sulochana Das, Jatani MLA Suresh Rautray, Minister Ashok Chandra Panda, MLA Prafulla Samal also attended the function.
The students from 10 colleges in the city took part in the civilian parade which was held this morning followed by the cultural programme in the afternoon.
The 10 colleges include Buxi Jagabandhu Bidyadhar (BJB) Autonomous College, Rajdhani College, Maharishi College of Natural Law, Biju Patnaik College of Science and Education,
Kamala Nehru Women’s College, Satyasai Women’s College, Maharishi Women’s College, City Women’s College, Raja Madhusudan Dev Degree College, and Debaray Nayapalli College.
As many as 32 students from each college participated in the event in respective college uniforms, said sources. The students can participate in the cultural competition at 4.30 pm today that will be held in front of Indira Gandhi Park near the State Assembly.
The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) had appealed to the residents to celebrate Capital Foundation Day and decorate their homes with lights and lamps on the occasion.
The Bhubaneswar Foundation day could not be celebrated for the past two years in view of the pandemic. In its official Twitter handle, the civic body wrote, “The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation makes an appeal to all its citizens to observe the 74th foundation day on April 13 and decorate their houses and institutions.”
The first Prime Minister of India Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had laid the foundation stone of the city on April 13, 1948.
In the year 1948, there were only 14,000 people in the city whereas now the population has increased to more than one crore in Bhubaneswar. Bhubaneswar replaced Cuttack as the capital of the State, a year after India secured independence from the Britishers.
Famous German architect and urban planner Otto Koenigsberger prepared the city’s first master plan in 1948 for a population of 40 thousand. Since then, Bhubaneswar remains a celebrated model of modern architecture and city planning.
The name of the new capital came from “Tribhubaneswara” or “Bhubaneswar” (literally “Lord of the Earth”), a name of Shiva, the deity of the Lingaraja temple. The Legislative Assembly of Odisha was shifted from Cuttack to Bhubaneswar in 1949. The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation was established on 14 August 1994.
Ms Kalinga