Press Trust of India Posted online: Saturday, September 30, 2006 at 1702 hours IST
Kendrapara, September 30: The British might have left the country long ago, but one of its establishments managed to thrive till recently on official records at least, in this coastal Orissa district.
A warehouse owned by the erstwhile East India Company at Danpur village on the outskirts of this town that continued to be on the list of the local power distribution company, CESU, and was marked a ‘chronic defaulter’.
"The British warehouse was probably drawing electricity more than few decades before the country's independence," N K Mishra, Sub-Divisional Officer (Commerce) of CESU said.
"It is one of the few structures which was electrified by the Britishers much before others enjoyed the luxury of electricity," Mishra said.
"We were surprised to detect the name of the company in the official list of defaulters. We made spot verification but failed to locate the warehouse," he said.
"It was a mistake that it continued on the list of consumers till its deletion earlier this week," he said.
Outstanding arrears against the warehouse were listed as Rs 68,902. Purushottam Nayak, President of the Orissa Freedom Fighters' Association, said Danpur then was a prominent navigation centre and commercial hub.
Nayak, a former MLA from Kendrapara, said the British warehouse had gloriuous past as far as maritime trade was concerned.
"The building collapsed a few years after Independence with declining trade coupled with lack of maintenance," he recalled.
