Mahatma Gandhi Road, Kolkata
| মহাত্মা গান্ধী রোড महात्मा गांधी रोड |
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Mahatma Gandhi Road at Burrabazar
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| Former name(s) | Harrison Road |
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| Location | Kolkata |
| Coordinates | 22°27′40″N 88°19′46″E / 22.461062°N 88.329451°ECoordinates: 22°27′40″N 88°19′46″E / 22.461062°N 88.329451°E |
Mahatma Gandhi Road or M.G. Road, previously known as Harrison Road, is a principal East-West thoroughfare in north Kolkata (previously known as Calcutta), the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. In 1889 this was the first street of the city to be lit by electricity.
Mahatma Gandhi road was initially known as Harrison Road. After the independence of India in 1947 the Harrison Road in Kolkata was renamed Mahatma Gandhi Road (M.G. Road) and the name of the upper part of Chowringhee was changed to Jawaharlal Nehru road. In 1889 when Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation (CESC) started promoting electricity in the city, this Harrison road was the first street in the city to be lit by the authority. Calcutta Improvement Trust (CIT) decided to build the Central Avenue in 1911. By 1926, Harrison Road was stretched to Beadon Street in the north and to Bowbazar in the south.
Charu Guha, a pioneer of the city's studio photography, started her first studio in the Harrison Road in 1920. During India's independence movement, this street was previously considered as "communally sensitive" neighbourhood of the city. On 1 April 1930, The Vancouver Sun newspaper reported— "four more were killed in rioting this afternoon in Harrison Road, which is the usual storm quarter in this region."
The road is arterial in maintaining east–west connection in Kolkata. It is the shortest distance between two major rail stations in the city—Sealdah and Howrah station. Several important places are in this road, such as Sealdah Station, Amherst street crossing, College Street crossing, Chittaranjan Avenue crossing, Netaji Subhas Road, Burrabazar, Chitpur Road crossing, and Howrah Bridge.
The M. G. Road runs from the Sealdah station and Vidyapati Setu in the eastern limit to the threshold of Howrah Bridge in the west.
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Wikipedia