| Salt Lake City (bidhan Nagar), Kolkata |
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Information AboutSalt Lake City (bidhan Nagar), Kolkata |
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It is famous as one of the nicer places in the city and also a centre for the IT industry. DEVELOPMENT The tremendous pressure of accommodating the ever-increasing population in the city of Calcutta contributed to the emergence of the idea of a planned township in the Suburbs of the city. The second Chief Minister of West Bengal Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy came up with the idea of satellite townships. Salt Lake City, later was renamed Bidhan Nagar(literally the ''City of Bidhan'') as a mark of recognition to one of its founders, Dr. Roy. Bhabanath Sen, a Bengali landlord had taken the present Salt Lake area on lease from 1869 to 1956. By May 19th 1956, the Government had taken over and then gradually Salt Lake started taking shape. A Yugoslav firm was entrusted with the reclamation work of the water-filled area. Five-mile long pipes were laid down from Ghushuri to Salt Lake for sand filling. It took 7 years to fill up the 15 sq. km. of land with sand water, which was once a very fertile fishing zone. On 16th of April, 1962 the Salt Lake City was born. The development of the area was divided into "sectors". By 1965, Sector-I was complete and by 1969, Sector-II and Sector-III were ready for occupancy. Then came up the Industrial Sectors IV and V (the location of the IT industries). The 12.52 sq. km. area of the town initially comprised of 12873 plots of land apart from 87 housing estates and blocks. The land area has almost doubled now with the inclusion of Duttabad, Sukantanagar, Nayapatti and Mahishbathan. AUTHORITY Initially this planned city was under the South Dum Dum Municipality; it then came under the wings of Housing and Urban Development Corporation(HUDCO) of the West Bengal government and subsequently in 1989, a Notified Area Authority was set up. Ultimately 1992 onwards, Salt Lake has come under the wings of its own Municipal Authority. FACILITIES Being a planned city, Salt Lake offers many facilities usually not available in many of the other older Indian cities. It has clean and well-maintained roads and sanitation, tree-clad boulevards, relatively pollution free environment, its own swimming pool, a large number of schools, the largest sports stadium in India (1) ,modern shopping malls, an amusement park, a sports training centre(the Netaji Subhas Sports Institute , a 5-star hotel and a vast array of municipal offices that cater not only to the local town but to the entire city of Calcutta. Originally, Salt Lake had been designed to accommodate the entire administrative apparatus of greater Calcutta, but this idea was dropped early during the planning phase. Bidhan Nagar is home to several academic, research and professsional institutions. The Saha Institute Of Nuclear Physics , The Variable Energy Cyclotron and the Satyendra Nath Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences offer research facilities. The Bidhannagar College , The Technical Teacher's Training Institute, the College of Leather Technology, the Administrative Training Institute and Jadavpur University's second campus, the West Bengal University Of Technology , the West Bengal National University Of Juridical Sciences , the Calcutta campus of IIT Kharagpur , the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information Technology, the National Institute Of Fashion Technology , the National Institute Of Homeopathy and several management and engineering colleges and other institutions are located in the township. Apart from this of course there are police stations, electricity offices, etc. However poor street lighting has made Petty Theft and Eve Teasing a recurrent problem. |
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