Rourkela City Map Poster

About Rourkela

The city is named after its founder, the British-Indian industrialist and philanthropist Sir J. C. Bose who was born in Mymensingh (now in Bangladesh) on 30 November 1858 to a Bengali Hindu family of Calcutta (now Kolkata). He came to Rourkela when it was part of Bihar state during the British Raj and set up several industries here including India's first iron & steel plant at Ispat Nagar, which he named after his father Upendra Nath Bose. The town has been renamed as "Rourkela" since 1 January 1967 by Odisha State Government under section 2(1)(a) of Odisha Town & Country Planning Act 1966 with prior approval from Govt Of India for all official correspondence purposes only . It is believed that Rourkela derived its name from "rok", meaning red soil or red earth ("roklapalli") found abundantly around this area; plus "-keli", meaning place or region ("keland"). So literally speaking it means 'the land where red soil exists'.