The rotary outside Bidhannagar Ramakrishna Vivekananda Kendra will now officially be known as “Ramakrishna Island”, while the DD Block centre itself will be powered by newly-installed solar panels.
These are among the initiatives planned as part of the golden jubilee celebrations of the spiritual institute. “April 2025-’26 marks the 50th year of our centre. We have already hosted two major functions, and a third will be held in winter. We have installed fibreglass murals on our ground and first floors on the day of Rathayatra and are now rolling out more initiatives,” said secretary Chanchal De.
The solar panels were inaugurated recently by Swami Gwanalokananda, trustee of Belur Math and secretary of the Ramakrishna Mission Swami Vivekananda’s Ancestral House and Cultural Centre.
“We have installed nine panels that will generate a total of 9KW of electricity,” said De. “Our three-storey building has a lift, a pump, multiple fans, and various kinds of lights. Our quarterly electricity bills ranged between Rs 20,000 and 30,000, so going solar was the logical step. The panels will meet the building’s entire energy needs and there is also provision for the electric board to purchase surplus power that we feed into the central grid.”
A young electrical engineer from BA Block, Saptarshi Bhattacharya, played a key role in setting up the panels. His grandfather, Shankar Prasad Bhattacharya, happens to be a founder member of the centre too.
Swami Gwanalokananda uses the hose to inaugurate their fire-fighting system
On the same day, the institute also inaugurated fire-fighting equipment. “We run a school in our building and, as per new government regulations, we are required to have a fire safety system,” said De.
Island christening
The rotary outside the centre divides CD, DD, CE, and DE blocks and has long been informally referred to as Ramakrishna Island. The name got official recognition only recently. “We had applied to Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation for the same in January and were informed in late July that the proposal had been approved at a board meeting,” De explained.
MLA and minister Sujit Bose and mayor Krishna Chakraborty were scheduled to attend the event where a marble plaque bearing the new name would be fixed to the Island. “But on that day, councillor Ranjan Podder fell ill and had to be rushed to a hospital, so they could not attend. So Swami Gwanalokananda unveiled a temporary flex banner with the name. The plaque will be installed shortly,” said De.
The institute has also written to the East-West Metro authorities regarding the nearby Central Park station. “The station has multiple exits and we have requested that one of them be signposted with our centre’s name. We are yet to hear from the authorities,” De noted.