Kolkata | The nearly 250-year-old Writers Buildings in the heart of the city looks all set to get back its status as West Bengal's state secretariat, following the BJP's decision that its chief minister will not function from 'Nabanna', the seat of power of the Mamata Banerjee administration in Howrah on the other side of the river Hooghly.
Writer’s Buildings, which witnessed an armed raid by freedom fighters during the British period and governance by chief ministers mainly from the Congress and CPI(M), will get back its earlier status as the state secretariat permanently, a senior state government official said on Wednesday.
Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress came to power in the state in 2011, and the CMO was in the Writers Buildings for a brief period before moving to 'Nabanna', a new 14-storey structure at Shibpur in Howrah, two years later. Nabanna was built for a project of the Hooghly River Bridge Commissioners.
The official said that till the last remaining maintenance work at the Writers Buildings is completed, the new chief minister is likely to function from the annex building of the West Bengal Assembly.
“Before the work is completed at Writer’s Buildings, there is a proposal to let the new chief minister function temporarily from the annex building of the assembly,” the official said.
He, however, said no final decision has been taken in this regard.
Chief Secretary Dushmanta Narial has held an emergency meeting with Assembly Secretary Samarendra Nath Das to discuss the proposal.
“We have been asked to keep the annex building ready and take into account every infrastructural issue, considering security and other aspects. The building has to be kept ready,” a senior assembly official said.
BJP state president Samik Bhattacharya said, "We had said in 2021 that once our government comes to power, we will run the government from Writers Buildings.”
Built in 1780, the majestic three-storey red building followed the neoclassical style with Corinthian columns. Constructed by a self-styled builder named Thomas Lyon, the structure was initially a boarding place for the junior-level clerks called ‘Writers’. This is why it came to be known as Writers Buildings. Later, Warren Hastings changed it to an administrative office. The complex houses a few buildings.
On December 8, 1930, the Writers Buildings witnessed a daring attack by freedom fighters Benoy Basu, Badal Gupta, and Dinesh Gupta. Dressed in European attire, they shot dead Lt Col NS Simpson, the Inspector General of Prisons, infamous for his brutal torture of Indian prisoners in jail.
Post-Independence, it became the seat of power of the West Bengal government. From the first chief minister Prafulla Chandra Ghosh of the Congress in 1947 to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee of the CPI(M) in 2011, all CMs functioned from this edifice till Mamata Banerjee of the TMC left it for Nabanna.
These chief ministers included Bidhan Chandra Roy, considered the architect of modern Bengal, and CPI(M) patriarch Jyoti Basu, who ruled the state for 23 years in a row.
Now, the BJP has made a move to govern West Bengal from Writers Buildings.
