Lal Dighi - Lake in Kolkata - Kolkata, India

It is a historic and nice place for sitting beside the water.GPO,Writers Building,2 churches are near by.

What an amazing location, a pond with glancing views of a majestic dome behind the tree line and yet Kolkata manages to lay waste to the touristic potential of Lal dighi. It's cramped up with waste, there is a foul smell around the area, and the entire sidewalk was full of dirt and garbage. I hope they clean and maintain it.

Really nice place for visiting in the weekends. There are many food stalls having a good quality of food, stalls for different types of ornaments and also there are cultural programmes. I loved it.

This is a place to stay calm for a while. It is called that the shadow of the adjacent red coloured church had been fallen on the water and it seemed to be red. That is the cause of the name of Lal Dighi..

Lal Dighi (meaning Red Pool) is a body of water in the middle of B. B. D. Bagh, earlier known as Tank Square or Dalhousie Square, in the heart of Kolkata, earlier known as Calcutta, in the Indian state of West Bengal. Government of West Bengal has planned for a 115,000 square feet (10,700 m2) underground car park at the northern end of Lal Dighi at a cost of Rs. 35 crore. It will accommodate about 700 cars. It will be the biggest car parking plaza in Kolkata.It will be a two-storey structure and it would not cause any harm to the existing Lal Dighi.Earlier, three construction firms - Simplex Projects Limited, Tantia Construction Company and Samar and Samar, a joint venture with Rajpath Contractors Engineers Limited, had submitted bids on the original tender, but the Public Works Department (PWD) cancelled that and revised the plan.The state government asked private players for free parking zone for 350 VIP cars. When it failed to find a build-operate-transfer partner, it assign PWD the job of constructing the underground car park from the state government's budget. The plan has faced various hurdles. The urban development department and PWD have been at loggerheads.PWD and Calcutta Tramways Company could not agree on shifting tram tracks on the north-east of Lal Dighi, along the Netaji Subhas Road.When the PWD sought permission to pump out Lal Dighi water, the fire services categorically said no. The pond also acts as the reservoir for water pumps in the BBD Bag complex. The fire department has stipulated that a minimum water level of 2.5 metre must be maintained during the two-year construction of the parking plaza. Lal Dighi's current water level is 6 metre.The project is expected to be completed around October 2010. B. B. D. Bagh is likely to undergo a regeneration drive, possibly with financial aid from US-based World Monuments Fund and some city based chambers of commerce. Set up to further accessorise the centre of the city without losing the old world charm emanating from colonial architecture, Kolkata Regeneration Society (KRS) has been formed with the Governor, Gopalkrishna Gandhi as chairman. The other functionaries of the society include Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, mayor, Barun De, historian and Dilip Chakraborty, principal secretary, state information and cultural affairs department. It would function in an advisory capacity.[13] With about 8 feet (2.4 m) of the twenty feet structure likely to be above ground, engineers, architects and town planners fear that it would be an eyesore in a heritage zone. After a presentation was made to the Kolkata Regeneration Society in June 2007, the Governor has advised a reconsideration of the design.

Nice place to sit and relax and enjoy the cool breeze.

The Lal Dighi is also popularly known as Dalhousie Square.The name 'Lal Dighi' means 'Red Water' in Bengali.The water body is surrounded by many types of great spot. Many of Kolkata's Heritage buildings are around the Lal Dighi, like GPO, High Court, Writers' Building, Andrew's Church, etc.

B.B.D. Bagh (or Dalhousie Square as it was formerly known) was created as the center of the British East India Company's trading post along the banks of the Hooghly River. Between the river and the tank (now known as Lal Dighi), lay the original Fort William. In the summer of 1756, Nawab Siraj ud-Daulah of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa launched an attack on the British town for the company's decision to strengthen the fortifications around it. The survivors of the attack were sent to a garrison within the fort which spurred an incident infamously known as the Black Hole of Calcutta. The British soon retook the city after the Nawab retreated from the forces of Robert Clive. Within a year, the British East India Company's forces had taken all of Bengal and Calcutta, along with the square, was established as the commercial and political center of British-occupied India. Over the next one and a half centuries, the square grew in importance and influence. It was named after Lord Dalhousie, the Governor-General of India. After the fall of company rule in India, the Writers' Building became the secretariat of the Viceroy of India. A number of corporations and institutions opened offices and headquarters in and around the square, giving it its role as the central business district of the city. In 1912, the capital of British-occupied India was officially moved to New Delhi, but the majority of the financial and political institutions in the area remained. During the first half of the 20th century, the Indian Independence Movement began to reach its peak and took a violent turn in Bengal. On the eighth of December 1930, three revolutionaries, Benoy, Badal, and Dinesh, stormed the building and fatally shot the Inspector General of Prisons, N.S. Simpson. The three committed suicide and the square was renamed B.B.D. Bagh in their honor after Indian independence. In 1947, the political establishments were officially handed over to the government of India and the government of the newly formed state of West Bengal. Over the next few decades, Kolkata (formerly called Calcutta) would go through rapid economic decline, but B.B.D. Bagh would remain the heart of East India.