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Ranchi district administration on Monday put an official seal on one of the most sought-after tourist spots in the capital by registering a society to develop Tagore Hill, about 3km from Albert Ekka Chowk in Morabadi, waylaying the claims of two women on the picturesque property that once belonged to the poet’s elder brother.
The inspector general of registration department, Swarnaditya Sahay, handed over the certificate of registration of Tagore Hill Society to the district administration on Monday.
Tagore Hill, named after Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s elder brother Jyotindranath, who had built a retreat perched atop the hill at an altitude of 300ft across 17 acres, is famed for its bird’s eye view of the city.
Though the building — aptly named Shanti Dham or abode of peace — is sparse to the extreme, it has hosted some cultural events held by the Bengali community this year on the occasion of Rabindranath’s 150th birth anniversary.
Before Monday, however, who owned Tagore Hill was not known to many.
Its upkeep was the onus of an unregistered trust established in 1986 by one Madhusudan Chaudhary with the then deputy commissioner B.K. Sinha as ex-officio chairman.
After Jyotindranath’s demise in 1925, Shanti Dham fell into neglect and became a haven of criminals. In 1963, apparently, Purnima Thakur, the daughter-in-law of Tagore descendent Surendranath, sold the property to one Mandodari Devi, Chaudhary’s wife, for Rs 20,000.
Chaudhary’s two daughters, Nirmala Sahu and Saroj Gupta, who are clearly unhappy with Monday’s development, may now move court.
“The district administration can’t ignore us. We have every right over the land and district administration can’t do anything to develop the place without taking us into confidence,” Gupta’s son Mitul Kumar, an advocate of Jharkhand High Court, told The Telegraph.
However, deputy commissioner Kamal Kishore Soan disagreed.
“They have no documents. Tagore Hill is a national and public monument. An individual can’t make claims on it,” he said.
Soan also appeared upbeat about the registration of the society with 60 members.
“In the capacity of chairman of Tagore Hill Society, I will develop the hill with the help of the tourist department. Rajya Sabha member Ram Dayal Munda has already extended his support to the development work by offering an amount of Rs 95 lakh from the MP area development fund,” he said.
Soan, as ex-officio chairman, will be aided by additional district magistrate (law and order) Chittaranjan Kumar as ex-officio secretary and revenue department in-charge Dipankar Panda as treasurer.
Prominent names among the 60 members include artists Haren Thakur, Amitabh Mukherjee and Mukund Nayak, vocalist Madhusudan Ganguly, builder and politician Jyotirmoya Choudhary, retired senior ITDC employee M.N. Choudhary, among others.
Jyotindranath bought Tagore Hill in 1908 from landowner Harihar Singh after the demise of his wife Kadambini Devi. Amid scenic environs, he busied himself with the Bengali translation of Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s Marathi Srimad Bhagwad Gita Rahashya. The Bengali edition was first published in 1924 with Tilak bearing the publication cost.
