Kolkata: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday laid the foundation stone of a Mahakaal (Shiva) temple at Matigara near Siliguri in Darjeeling district and launched more than 40 bus services, including six luxury sleeper buses, to ply between north and south Bengal.
“We will build the world’s highest idol of Mahakaal here. The temple will be a large-scale replica of the Mahakaal temple in Darjeeling town. This will be a centre of cultural and religious study as well. It will generate employment. Instead of using Siliguri as a transit point, people should treat it as a religious, cultural and tourism centre,” Banerjee said before laying the foundation stone.
She said that the state government will build the Mahakaal temple complex on 17 acres of land at a cost of ₹344.2 crore.
The state Cabinet cleared the Mahakaal temple project on November 24. Land that was earlier given on lease to a private real estate company but was lying unutilised was handed over to the Siliguri Jalpaiguri Development Authority.
The Cabinet decision prompted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to accuse Banerjee of trying to recover lost ground.
With Assembly elections scheduled to be held in a few months, many saw this as a move by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) to counter the BJP, which dominates the north Bengal region.
The Matigara-Naxalbari and Siliguri Assembly seats were won by the BJP in the 2021 state polls.The BJP bagged 30 of the 54 Assembly seats in the eight north Bengal districts in 2021, although the TMC won 213 of the state’s 294 seats. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP secured seven of the eight seats in north Bengal.
Months after Banerjee inaugurated the Jagannath temple at Digha in East Midnapore district in June, Banerjee had announced in October last year that her government would build the biggest temple for Mahakaal.
“We built the Jagannath temple with the intention to promote culture and tourism. Millions are visiting it now. We will also set up a Darga Angan in Kolkata with the same goal,” Banerjee said at a government event on Friday.
“We will form a trust that will manage this temple. The monks will be its members. Ramakrishna Mission was given charge of the homes of Swami Vivekananda and Sister Nivedita in Kolkata after we acquired those buildings,” Banerjee said.
Referring to the Ganga Sagar Mela at Sagar Island in South 24 Parganas, Banerjee said that Larsen & Toubro will build a bridge connecting the mainland to the island so that pilgrims will not have to travel by boat. “I recently laid the foundation stone of the bridge,” she said.
Bengal BJP chief spokesperson Debjit Sarkar said, “A state government cannot spend money from the exchequer to build temples, mosques or churches.”
