Biswa Bangla Convention Centre & gate before Pujas

Come Puja and the people of Bengal will get two new gifts from the Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO) in New Town.

The Biswa Bangla Convention Centre and the Biswa bangle gate will be opened before the Pujas and hectic work is on to give the final touches. Both are dream projects of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The two-day Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS), 2018 will be held at the Convention Centre.

Work on a war footing is on to complete the Biswa Bangla Convention Centre, the one-of-its-kind in Eastern India. It is a combination of the Vigyan Bhavan and India habitat Centre in New Delhi. The centre is coming up on a 10 acre of land and is situated next to HIDCO Bhavan. Bagjola canal which runs close to the Centre has been cleaned up and the banks have been beautified. The construction of a floating jetty has been proposed along with setting up of a floating vegetable market. The Convention Centre will have a 3,000 capacity auditorium which is the highest in the state which is much more than the capacity of Rabindra Sadan and Nazrul Mancha. There will be halls to hold seminars and symposia along with a library and a gymnasium. There will be 100 rooms for the guests and it will be run by a private player. Search is on to find out the firm which will be assigned the job. Senior HIDCO officials said though final touches are being given, many groups have shown interest to book the auditorium to hold conferences and many hotels have shown interest to run the rooms. It may be mentioned that the pace of construction of the Convention Centre got slowed down due to demonetisation. Firhad Hakim, state Urban Development minister had visited the centre to see the progress of work some months ago and met senior engineers of L&T which has been entrusted with the construction work.

The Biswa Bangla Gate is also being given the final touches. It is basically a viewer's gallery with a small coffee corner. There will be a logo of Biswa Bangla. As it is the life's dream of Mamata Banerjee to see that Bengal becomes world's best, she wanted a gate with the logo of Biswa Bangla to be constructed in New Town to greet the visitors who will come to the city from airport. The road connecting Chinar Park with Eastern Metropolitan Bypass is called the Biswa Bangla Sarani.