On the foothills of the Mahendragiri hill range is Paralakhemundi, or Parlakimedi, as it was known in 1899, the year the town got its railway station. It was built under the patronage of Goura Chandra Gajapati Narayan Deo II (1863-1904), a minor royal in this part of southern Odisha, who wanted access to the Howrah-Madras mainline. The Paralakhemundi Light Railways was born: narrow gauge tracks to Naupada (now in Andhra Pradesh), 40 kilometres away. The station is still in operation, with just a few renovations to the main structure.
However, with the Indian Railways planning to modernise its infrastructure – the last was done in 2010, when the original narrow gauge was replaced with broad gauge – there is a fear that the old structures will be demolished to make place for the new.
On May 8, A.B. Tripathy, the convener of the Odisha chapter of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), a society for the preservation of the country’s built and natural inheritance, wrote to Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw asking for the station’s preservation.
