Modi to inaugurate Archaeological Museum at Lalitgiri on Dec 24

By the Samikhsya Team

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the Archaeological Museum located at Lalitgiri, a famous Buddhist site in Odisha’s Cuttack district during his visit to Odisha on December 24.

The museum is built in the larger public interest to boost tourism, as per policy of Site Museums.

The Archaeological Survey of India has constructed the Site Museum at Lalitgiri for display and protection of retrieved antiquities.

The museum building has been constructed at a cost of Rs10 crore. The whole complex is spread across an area of 4750 sq.m. with six galleries displaying the antiquities.

Huge sculptures of the Buddha and various Buddhist deities, architectural fragments of Viharas and Chaityas are arranged period-wise across six galleries.

The most important finding of the lalitgiri are relic caskets found inside the stupa during excavations in the year 1985. Three khondolite stone caskets were found out of which two have one set of steatite, silver and gold caskets each with the relics inside in the form of charred bones.

The Prime Minister will also release the commemorative coin and postage stamp in memory of Paika Rebellion at a function to be held in IIT Bhubaneswar campus on December 24.

He will also inaugurate and a chair in memory of event in Utkal University, Bhubaneswar at a cost of Rs 5 crore.

The Government of India has decided to set up a chair in the memory of the event. The money will be released to the University as corpus fund to be kept in Escrow account.

(UNI Input)