January 31, 2019
Bangla CM inaugurates Biswa Bangla Gate in New Town
The beautiful 55-metre tall steel-and-glass Biswa Bangla Gate at Narkelbagan More (Rabindra Tirtha crossing) in New Town was inaugurated today by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. It is already a talk-of-the-town and is expected to become a landmark, being located on the route taken for travelling from the airport to Kolkata via Rajarhat.
The CM inaugurated the gate on the sidelines of the inauguration of 43rd International Kolkata Book Fair.
This is the culmination of Mamata Banerjee’s dream of a gate as a landmark for Kolkata, like India Gate for Delhi and Gateway of India for Mumbai.
The structure has been designed by experts from IIT Mumbai. The gate is in the form of two steel arches intersecting at 55 m above the ground, holding up a circular glass-fronted viewing gallery 25m from the ground. On the circular wall of the gallery are pictures of various locations of Kolkata, cultural icons and wildlife of Bangla, etc. The viewing gallery is 200m in circumference and holds a restaurant, to be run by HIDCO.
The way to the viewing gallery and restaurant is via two glass lifts and two sets of spiral stairs, all of which are embedded into the legs of the two arches. The gallery can hold 45 people at a time. There is a fee for accessing the viewing gallery
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