More than fifty years ago the Catholic Mission was started by a member of the Paris Foreign Missionary Society of Milan. An Italian priest obtained some 65 acres of land on lease from the Goodricks Company Tea Estate. He was a good architect and together with other masons he constructed a big Church, a presbytery and a school. He also brought some Catholic families from the nearby Jipur Tea Estate, gave a few cents of land to each family and settled them very near to the mission station and named it Maria Basti. It was one of the oldest missions, indeed the fourth one in the diocese of Jalpaiguri. The Foreign Missionary priests remained there for almost three decades. The local diocesan priests took charge of the parish and there was quarrel between the priests and the people of Maria Basti. So the parish was closed down in 1981. The people demanded the bishop to reopen it, but it could not be materialized. Hence His Lordship Most Rev. James A. Toppo, Bishop of Jalpaiguri thought of the Rosarians and invited them.

It was the long cherished desire of the bishop that a Rosarian Ashram be established in his own diocese and for almost two decades, he waited for them. He visited the Rosarian Generalate in Bangalore and requested the Prior General to make his dream come true. Hence the General Council (February 4 to 6, 1998) decided to open a new house in Jalpaiguri.

The simple inauguration of the Rosarian Ashram, Maria Basti took place on 7^th March, 1998 in the presence of the Prior General, Fr. M.L. Aloysius, CR and the Local Ordinary, a few diocesan priests, our Fathers and Brothers, together with a big group of Maria Basti Parishioners. The first three pioneers; Bro. Paulus as Superior, Bro. Ajit and Bro. Amal Kumar. After clearing the old, abandoned presbytery for almost eighteen years, the first inmates were fully settled at Maria Basti on 26^th March, 1998. The mission school conducted in our compound was later shifted to a corner of our property.