Cuttack, March 20: Odisha’s first maritime museum will be thrown open to public on Utkal Divas.

“Chief minister Naveen Patnaik will inaugurate the maritime museum on the occasion of Utkal Divas in April,” said executive engineer of Jobra irrigation division Subrat Das.

During the British Era, the museum building was a navigation workshop.

Das said from April 2, the museum would remain open on all working days except Monday.

Visitors will be able to have a glimpse of the British period maritime history of the state at the museum. An entry fee of Rs 10 will be collected from the visitors for the maintenance of the museum.

However, no entry fee will be collected from students and children below 10 years of age.

A 17-member trust headed by the chief minister was constituted last month to look after the development and maintenance of the maritime museum which is expected to be one of the key tourist attractions in the city.

A fund of Rs 12 crore has already been sanctioned and the amount would be kept in a bank while the interest earned from the money would be utilised for the payment of salary of the staff and other personnel working at the museum, Das added.

Official sources said that there would be 10 galleries at the maritime museum. These would include an introduction gallery, a maritime history gallery, a boat building gallery, a workshop gallery, a maritime rituals gallery, a navigation gallery, a gallery on the monuments on Odisha coast, a boat display shed, a saw mill and a boat repairing jetty.

The chief minister will also lay the foundation stone for an aquarium inside the museum. More than 12 species of marine creatures will be kept inside the aquarium, which, once completed, would be another attraction here.

The Britons had set up the workshop at Jobra in 1868 and had made Cuttack a hub of irrigation and inland waterways in the region.

By setting up the workshop at Jobra, they connected Cuttack with the hinterland. It was set up by the public works department of the British administration through the efforts of engineer G.H Faulkner.

The work for restoration and conversion of the workshop into a maritime museum is being carried out by the Indian National Trust for Art and Culture (Intach). The project’s foundation stone was laid in 2007.