Parlakimidi

Paralakhemundi lies near the eastern edge of the Odisha hills, in the old Khemundi country between the uplands and the coastal plain. It became the seat of a ruling family whose lands included both cultivated villages and the hill tracts inhabited by communities led by local chiefs.

The rulers transferred their headquarters from Pathapatnam to Paralakhemundi in the middle of the eighteenth century. When the East India Company extended its authority over the Northern Circars, Jagannath Narayan Deo resisted with support from neighbouring rulers. His forces were defeated at Jelmur in 1768, but his son Gajapati Deo continued the struggle. Hill leaders known as doras and bisoyis supported the resistance, linking a dispute over the ruling house to a wider uprising in the surrounding country.