Panighatta
Panighatta, or Panighata (English translation: "Water mill"), is a Tea Estate village on the banks of Balason River and the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains. Panighatta falls under the Mirik sub-division of Darjeeling district and is situated about 26 kilometers from Mirik and 32 km from Siliguri in the state of West Bengal in India. Geography. Location. Panighata is located at . The total geographical area of Panighata village is and is the fourth-biggest village by area in the sub-division. Area overview. The map alongside shows a part of the southern portion of the Darjeeling Himalayan hill  region in the Darjeeling district. In the Darjeeling Sadar subdivision 61.00% of the total population lives in the rural areas and 39.00% of the population lives in the urban areas. In the Mirik subdivision 80.11% of the total population lives in the rural areas and 19.89% lives in the urban areas. There are 78 tea gardens/ estates (the figure varies slightly according to different sources), in the district, producing and largely exporting Darjeeling tea. It engages a large proportion of the population directly/ indirectly. Some tea gardens were identified in the 2011 census as census towns or villages. Such places  are marked in the map as CT (census town) or R (rural/ urban centre). Specific tea estate pages are marked TE. Demographics. According to the 2011 Census of India, Panighata had a total population of 5,235 of which 2,595 (50%) were males and 2,640 (50%) were females. There were 438 persons in the age range of 0 to 6 years. The total number of literate people in Panighata was 3,588 (68.54% of the population over 6 years). Languages spoken. Nepali and Hindi. Tea. Panighatta Tea Estate employs about 750 permanent and 400 casual staff. The estate is spread over 900  acres and produces about 5.5 lakh kg tea annually. Notable persons. Rangu Souriya Education. Loreto School Panighatta is an English-medium coeducational institution established in 1995. It has facilities for teaching from nursery to class X. It is affiliated with the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education. Rainbow High School is an English-medium coeducational institution established in 1980. It has facilities for teaching from class Nursery to class X. It has 20 computers, a library with 1,000 books and a playground.