A day after inaugurating Arunachal Bhawan at Guwahati in Assam, Arunachal chief minister Pema Khandu on December 19 inaugurated the Arunachal State Guest House at Gaya in Bihar.
The guest house, besides offering accommodation to Buddhist pilgrims from Arunachal Pradesh, will also double up as a convention and cultural center, a release from the CMO said.
Speaking on the occasion, CM Pema Khandu profusely expressed gratitude to Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar for allotting the land to the Arunachal government for construction of the guest house.
He informed that it was a dream project of his late father and former chief minister Dorjee Khandu to have a facility for Buddhist followers of the state who throng Gaya at least once a year.
“Hundreds of pilgrims from our state, especially from the districts of West Kameng and Tawang come here, particularly during the winters. The dormitories in the guest house are specifically designed to accommodate devotees. With this, one of my late father’s incomplete dreams and aspirations of the Buddhist people of my state have been fulfilled,” Khandu said.
He further recalled that late Dorjee Khandu, as the then chief minister in 2011, had written a letter to his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar seeking a plot of land for construction of a guest house. Unfortunately, barely a couple of months later, Dorjee Khandu died in a helicopter crash near Tawang.
“In fact, when I met Nitish Kumar for the first time, he mentioned that he had received the letter (from late Dorjee Khandu) on the day when the tragic incident was flashing all over the news channels. On my request to take the project forward, he promptly responded and allotted us this plot of land and also ensured that all-out support was rendered to us by the Bihar government and local administration,” Khandu revealed.
The new G+4 guest house boasts of 47 rooms including dormitories with a capacity to accommodate 201 guests at a go. Completed at the cost of about Rs 15 crore, constructions began in 2018-19. The project was executed by the Arunachal government’s water resources department under the administration of the department of karmik and adhyatmik affairs (DoKAA).
Present on the occasion were Lhaygyala Rinpoche, the Abbot of Namgyal Monastery, Dharamshala, 14th Dalai Lama’s sister Jetsun Pema, Tawang MLA Tsering Tashi, DoKAA chairman Jambey Wangdi, representatives of the Dalai Lama’s office, and officials of Gaya district administration, police and municipal corporation.
