MAHARAJA PURNA CHANDRA (AUTONOMOUS)COLLEGE

About Institution

Maharaja Puma Chandra Autonomous College is one of the premier institutes of higher education in Odisha. The College was set up in the post-independent India way back in July, 1948, during the rule of the popular ministry, with Sri Sarat Chandra Das as the Prime Minister and Maharaja Sri Pratap Chandra Bhanj Deo as the ruling chief of the State of Mayurbhanj. Christened after the Late Maharaja Purna Chandra Bhanj Deo who, in his life time, was a great patron of literature and culture, the fledgling college lived, moved and had its beginning on the premises of Maharaja Krushna Chandra High School for a pretty long time. Afterwards, it was felt that the continuance of the College in the M.K.C. High School complex was neither desirable nor convenient. With the number of students shooting up every year a great demand was felt for a permanent site.
The College considered whether ‘to be or not to be’ a guest of the solitude offered to it by Chhancha village on the one hand and Takhatpur on the other. Having at last rejected both these uptown rural locations it stepped with a bang in the early sixties into the Maharaja’s palace which had earlier been purchased by the Government of Odisha in 1956.
Unlike the sages of yore who chose to teach their pupils in the verdant ambience of nature, the College nurtured its students amidst the very din and bustle of Baripada town itself like Socrates, the eminent philosopher, educating the young in the crowded market place of Athens. But Nature will not let the College alone. The Budhabalanga, purling.melodiously, time and again goads and guides the students to shed their inertia and be for ever intellectually on the move like the flow of its waters. In 1948 the College secured affiliation to Utkal University in Intermediate Arts and Science with a sanctioned strength of 112 and 08 students respectively.