CUTTACK: Historians have flayed the hurried decision of Archeological Survey of India (ASI) to inaugurate the incomplete museum at world famous Buddhist site Lalitgiri in the district. The ASI is likely to inaugurate the modern and sophisticated museum next week.
In a letter to the Director General of ASI at New Delhi, president of Buddhyan, a Buddhist Cultural Centre of Lalitgiri, Pradipta Kishore Bhuyan has stated that the purpose of the state-of-the-art museum was to enshrine the Buddhist relic caskets for public view. However, without enshrinement of these relic caskets permanently in the bullet-proof glass case set up inside the museum, the inauguration will be a mockery, he alleged.
“At present, the museum is not fully crafted. Again, there is an interim status quo order of the Orissa High Court regarding the shifting of relic caskets. Keeping this in view, the decision to inaugurate the museum is ill-conceived and not warranted,” he stated in the letter. Even security arrangements at the facility are yet to be finished, he added.
Following much hue and cry, the ASI in 2013 had decided to set up a permanent museum to house rare relics with an estimated cost of `9.41 crore at the pedestal Landa hill atop Lalitgiri. Work on the museum over 13,000 sqft of land was started in 2014.
As per reports, the excavation undertaken by ASI at Landa hill in 1988 had led to the discovery of sacred bone relics of prominent Buddhist luminaries preserved in the caskets of gold encapsulated respectively by silver, steatite and khondolite containers arranged like a Chinese puzzle box. After the rare discovery, which is said to be the first of its kind in eastern India, the ASI authority had preserved in its strong room at Bhubaneswar.Later, locals demanded to set up a permanent museum at Lalitgiri to house these rare relics for exhibition.