Bhubaneswar: Statues of 75 eminent personalities will be installed across 20 districts to celebrate Odisha’s rich legacy of reformers, poets, freedom fighters, and visionaries.
The government has allocated approximately Rs 14 crore for construction and installation of these statues, with a target to complete all work by the end of next year. The department of Odia Language, Literature, and Culture will oversee the project, in which statues will be distributed across districts, each honouring figures of regional and national significance.
The statue of former PMs Lal Bahadur Shastri and Atal Bihari Vajpayee will be installed in Khurda and Bhadrak/Jagatsinghpur/Puri districts respectively. Similarly, statues of Chandrasekhar Azad (Sambalpur) Shyama Prasad Mukherjee (Koraput), Swami Vivekananda (Bhadrak), Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (Balasore), Rendo Majhi (Kalahandi), B R Ambedkar (Angul), Lakshmanananda Saraswati (Sambalpur/Cuttack), who was assassinated in Kandhamal in 2008, Santali writer Raghunath Murmu, and Deendayal Upadhyay (Mayurbhanj), among others, have been planned in different parts of the state.
The list is as follows:
- Puri district: Bhakta Manei Sahu, Atal Bihari Vajpayee
- Khurda district: Bishwanath Das, Poet Sachidananda Routaray, Poet Kuntala Kumari Sabat, Veer Surendra Sai, Padma awardee Upendra Maharathi, Veer Sido Murmu and Kahnu Murmu, Ravi Ray, Binayak Acharya, Surendra Mohanty, Radhanath Rath, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Late Hemananda Biswal, Pindiki Bahubalendra, Dharanidhar Nayak, Laxmikanta Mohapatra
- Balasore district: Kabi Samrat Radhanath Ray, Mukunda Prasad Das, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Khudiram Bose
- Jagatsinghpur district: National Poet Veer Kishore Das, Sarala Das, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Mahesh Chandra Subahusingh
- Nayagarh district: Utkal Ghanta Jadumani Mohapatra, Pathani Samanta
- Cuttack district: Bhairab Mohanty, Sarala Devi, Rani Sukadevi, Kabichandra Kali Charan Pattanayak, Nilamani Bidyaratna, Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, Gangadhar Meher
- Bargarh district: Kunja Bihari Das, Gangadhar Meher, Manohar Singh
- Angul district: B R Ambedkar, Nabakrushna Choudhury
- Dhenkanal district: Sarangadhar Das, Baji Rout
- Bhadrak district: Revolutionary Chakradhar Behera, Martyr Niranjan Behera, Swami Vivekananda, Atal Bihari Vajpayee (at Dhusuri), Banchhanidhi Mohanty, Muralidhar Panda, Laxmikanta Mohapatra, Atal Bihari Vajpayee (at Chandbali)
- Balangir district: Dr Harekrushna Mahatab, Gangadhar Meher
- Ganjam district: Dibakar Pattanayak, Upendra Bhanja, Baladeb Rath, Jayamangala Rath, Santha Arakshita Das, Padma awardee Bhagaban Sahu, Harihar Mardaraj, Chakara Bisoi, Martyr Bhagat Singh, Shashi Bhusan Rath
- Sambalpur district: Laxmanananda Saraswati, Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das, Veer Chhabil Sai, Chandrasekhar Azad
- Kendrapara district: Madhusudan Das
- Mayurbhanj district: Pandit Raghunath Murmu, Deendayal Upadhyaya, Atal Bihari Vajpayee
- Koraput district: Shyama Prasad Mukherjee
- Kalahandi district: Rendo Majhi
- Keonjhar district: Ramadevi
- Sonepur district: Bhima Bhoi
- Rayagada district: Martyr Laxman Naik