Minister Mohanty said that, everyone knows about Nalanda from their school textbooks, but very few know about Lalitgiri, Ratnagiri and Udayagiri. While textbooks prepared by the NCERT mentions Nalanda as one of the major Buddhist sites in India, it has ignored Odisha as an important seat of Buddhist Learning. He demanded centre to include Buddhist heritage sites of the state in NCERT text books.

 

Minister Mohanty urged the Minister Kumari Selja to handed over the sacred relic of Buddha  to the state government as state government will display it for tourists and public at the state museum in Bhubaneswar. After the completion of new museum in Lalitgiri the state government will transfer the sacred Relic of the tooth of Buddha to Lalitgiri. It should be noted that ASI preserved the sacred relic of Buddha in it's strong room in Bhubaneswar after it was unearthed at Lalitgiri in 1986.