Berhampur: The students of Industrial Training Institute (ITI) at Berhampur in Odisha’s Ganjam district have made a life size statue of Maharaja Sri Krushna Chandra Gajapati Narayan Deb of Paralakhemundi with scrap materials.
Gopabandhu Das, political secretary to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and also an alumnus of SKCG College, Paralakhemundi unveiled the statue inside the ITI complex in presence of ITI Principal Rajat Kumar Panigrahi, eminent litterateur Bipin Nayak, working president of Gajapati Zilla Nagarika Sangha Ramesh Chandra Padhi and its members, faculty and students.
The height of this statue is six feet and weighs 110 kg. It is made with more than 1000 scrap nuts of two different sizes, about 20 kg bike timing chain and some amount of galvanised iron (GI) sheet. About 100 students of Fitter and Painter of the institute took about 25 days to build the statue under the guidance of faculty members Sunil Satpathy and Bichitra Padhihari.
Earlier, the students of the state government run ITI had built statues of Mahatma Gandhi, Netaji Subash Chandra Bose and legendary Biju Patnaik with scraps.
Maharaja Narayan Deo, the architect of modern Odisha, was born on 26th April 1892 in the royal family of Paralakhemundi belonging to the Ganga dynasty. In 1937, the first Governor of Odisha, Sir John Austin Hubback invited him to form the cabinet and thus he became the first Premier of Odisha from 1 April 1937 to 18 July 1937. He was also the Premier Odisha for the second time from 24 November 1941 to 30 June 1944.
His contributions towards the formation of Orissa state were significant. The Oriya Raksha agitation, launched for the formation of independent Orissa, was led by him. The 10th Utkal Sammilani was conducted at Paralakhemundi under his guidance in 1912. He had attended both the 1st and 2nd Round Table Conference held at London in 1931 and presented the memorandum for an independent and separate Odisha State.
