Angul District has a long and glorious past. It enters history as a part of the Bhaumakara Kingdom in the 8th century. They were succeeded by the Shulkis and Somavanshis before being replaced by the Eastern Gangas and the Gajapati Kingdom. Firuz Shah Tughlaq is also known to have traversed the district during a raid to capture elephants in the later Ganga era. The district later became a site of various small kingdoms who arose in the confusion following the dissolution of the Gajapati state. They owed nominal submission to the Mughals, the Bengal Nawabs and later the Marathas but were almost independent in their day-to-day affairs.
When the British conquered Odisha in 1803, they recognised these rulers as Feudatory estates and the Commissioner of Orissa was made their Superintendent. The estates which occupied this territory then were Angul, Pallahara, Talcher and Athamallik. In 1847, Raja Somnath Singh of Angul was deposed on flimsy grounds by the Bengal Government after a short military campaign. His estate was thereafter administered by a Tahsildar and was attached for revenue purposes to Cuttack District. In 1891, Angul estate along with the present day Phulbani subdivision of Kandhamal District was constituted into a new district with headquarters at Angul Town. Under the Angul District Regulations of 1894, the Deputy Commissioner was designated as the Collector, Magistrate as well as District Judge. He also exercised superintending powers over many of the neighbouring Garhjat States and was directly under the Political Agent at Sambalpur.
The creation of Orissa Province in 1936 led to the abolition of the district. Angul subdivision was added to Cuttack District and under the Angul Laws Regulation of 1936, the Collector, Cuttack was designated as ex-officio Deputy Commissioner, Angul. In 1948, the Collector, Dhenkanal took over this role. In addition, the neighbouring Garhjat states of Talcher, Athamallik and Pallahara were also added to Dhenkanal District. The Regulations were repealed in 1967 and Angul ceased to exist as a separate revenue entity.
For better administration, a new district of Angul was created on 27th March, 1993. This had four subdivisions at Pallahara, Athamallik and Talcher apart from the Sadar subdivision at Angul town. Today the district occupies an area of 6232 sq km in the centre of Odisha. It is bounded by Cuttack, Sundargarh, Kendujhar, Sambalpur, Deogarh and Dhenkanal districts apart from Nayagarh and Boudh across the Mahanadi River. The highest point is Malayagiri at 1187 m above MSL. It has 8 blocks, the same number of Tahsils and 23 police stations. There are 1930 villages in 225 Gram Panchayats, 2 Municipalities and one NAC. The population as per the Census of 2011 is 12.73 lakhs with about a sixth of it being urban. SCs and STs number around 2.39 and 1.79 lakhs respectively.
Angul today is the industrial hub of Odisha. The Talcher and Brahmani valley coalfields are India’s largest by gross production. Numerous PSUs like MCL, NTPC, NALCO and FCI are based here apart from large private enterprises like JSPL and JITPL. State level training institutes like Police Training College and Forest Rangers College are also located here. There are a number of small ancillary industrial units spread throughout the district. The Athamallik and Pallahara subdivisions are rich in forest wealth and the Satkosia Tiger Reserve along with other reserve forests occupy a large part of the district.
The district headquarters is 125 km from Bhubaneswar. National and State highways connect it to all major cities of Odisha. Talcher and Angul are major railway stations on the Sambalpur-Bhubaneswar railway line.
