West Bengal’s state secretariat is returning to the former Mahakaran, or Writers’ Building. The state secretariat had run from the Writers’ Building since independence. The building is also known as Mahakaran.
In 2011, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress came to power in the state, ending 34 years of Left Front rule, and Mamata became chief minister. In 2013 she then moved the state secretariat from Mahakaran, or the Writers’ Building, to Howrah, on the other bank of the Hooghly river from Kolkata. There she established the state secretariat under the name Nabanna.
Mamata was defeated in the 2026 state assembly election. The BJP came to power, and the BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari became chief minister. On taking office he announced that the state secretariat would be brought back to the historic Writers’ Building. Restoration work on the heritage building began at speed with that aim. Since taking power, Suvendu had been carrying out his office’s work temporarily at Nabanna.
Restoration of the Writers’ Building is now largely complete. The state government has therefore moved to transfer the state secretariat from Nabanna to the Writers’ Building, or Mahakaran, before the puja. The offices of the chief minister and five other ministers are due to begin work at Mahakaran on October 10, before the puja. With restoration of these offices complete, the chief minister will begin secretariat work there before Durga Puja, although the puja itself begins on October 15, which is Durga Panchami.
The chief minister’s office at Mahakaran was previously on the second floor; this time it is being placed on the third. Media reports also say that, alongside chief minister Suvendu Adhikari, the offices of panchayat and rural development minister Dilip Ghosh, municipal and urban development minister Agnimitra Paul, tourism and parliamentary affairs minister Sankar Ghosh, health minister Sharadwat Mukhopadhyay and public works and public health engineering minister Ajay Poddar are being restored and made ready. Offices for the chief secretary, the home secretary and the state police director general have also been prepared. Work on the other departments, however, remains largely unfinished.
The historic Writers’ Building was built in 1780 on the north bank of Laldighi in Kolkata’s historic Dalhousie, or BBD Bagh. The building was designed by Thomas Lyon. In 1776 the British East India Company had built 19 separate rooms here for its clerks to live in. The site previously held Kolkata’s first church, St Anne’s Church, built in the sixteenth century.
That was the first church the British built. When it collapsed through lack of maintenance and natural disaster, housing for clerks was built in its place. Those quarters built for clerks later became Mahakaran. Clerks were called writers in those days, and on that basis these buildings later took the name Writers’ Building.