Odisha to renovate Bezbaroa's house,convert it into a memorial

Odisha government today announced it will renovate the house of the doyen of Assamese literature Lakhminath Bezbaroa at Sambalpur and turn it into a memorial.
The announcement in this regard was made by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik after Assam's Cultural Affairs Minister Naba Kumar Doley and Media Adviser to Assam Chief Minister, Hrikesh Goswami met him at the secretariat here.
Patnaik said the people of Odisha feel proud of Bezbaroa. The Assamese writer had spent over two decades of his life between 1917 and 1937 in Sambalpur town.
The Odisha chief minister said the state government will bear all expenditure towards renovation of Bezbaroa's abandoned house. INTAC will execute the renovation work, he said.

Odisha Culture and Tourism minister Ashok Chandra Panda, who was present at the meeting, said that the state government will initially allocate Rs 50 lakh for renovation works and it may spend more if required.
Assam Cultural Affairs minister thanked the Odisha government for its cooperation.

Yesterday, the Assamese delegation visited the house of Bezbaroa at the Nelson Mandela chowk in Sambalpur days after Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal's wrote to his Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik requesting him not to demolish Bezbaroa's house.
They had also called on the District Collector of Sambalpur, Samarth Verma, to discuss about conserving the property of Bezbaroa at Sambalpur

There was a plan to demolish two buildings of Bezbaroa, including the house where he resided and the house which he used as an office, to pave way for construction of an approach road to the under construction second bridge over the river Mahanadi and development of rotary junction at the Nelson Mandela Chowk.
Born in 1864, Bezbaroa was a celebrated pioneer of modern Assamese literature and one of the literary stalwarts of the Jonaki Era, the age of romanticism in Assamese literature.