West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday unveiled a slew of development projects for Birbhum district, among which are a new IT hub, which is already in progress, theme city Gitabitan, housing complex at Prantik and a newly designed Tarapith area.
The chief minister said after an administrative meeting here that the district would immensely benefit with the completion of the ongoing and new projects.
Apart from the under-construction IT hub, an MSME market would be built up to sell produce of small and medium artisans where products of the well-knwon labels like Tantuja, Manjushree and Khadi would be available. The market would also host a Biswa Bangla outlet, she said.
A 129-acre land has been identified and granted to the Sriniketan-Santiniketan Development Authority (SSDA) for the development of theme city ‘Gitabitan’ in Bolpur, which would promote the state’s art and culture.
A cluster of housing complexes would come up at in the Prantik area to meet the growing demand for shelter by local people, she said adding that work was in progress to re-design the temple town ‘Tarapeeth’.
Expressing satisfaction over the performance of district administration she instructed the police to take stringent action against antisocial elements. “Be strict and take proper measure against the antisocial elements” she told senior police officers. The state chief secretary Basudeb Banerjee and director general of police Surajit Kar Purakayastha were present at the meeting. The state government would set up a police battalion in the district, she said.
Two ministers, Subrata Mukherjee and Firhad Hakim and a number of bureaucrats are accompanying the Chief Minister. The chief minister held a meeting with the Visva Bharati University authority to discuss development projects.
In the meeting she discussed with the officials the theft of the Nobel medallion of Rabindranath Tagore and observed that she would be the happiest person if the priceless object could be retrieved.
The CM said that if the state government was given the responsibility, it could try to retrieve the Nobel medallion of Rabindranath Tagore lost in 2004 from the Visva Bharati University.
The CBI back in 2010 had closed its investigation into the theft of the country’s first Nobel prize medal awarded to Tagore in 1913 and other Tagore memorabilia citing dearth of major clues.