CM gives Rs 25 lakh for Sarabha memorial

Written by Mahesh Sharma, Tribune News, Mandi Ahmedgarh

Friday, 16 November 2007

Moved by appeals of the residents of the area about the completion of the Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha memorial that had been announced nine years ago, Parkash Singh Badal, Chief Minister, Punjab, released a grant of Rs 25 lakh for the purpose and directed the deputy commissioner, Ludhiana, to get the work resumed immediately. He announced to give more grants as and when required. The grant was handed over to Sumer Gurjar, deputy commissioner, Ludhiana, at the closing ceremony of the 60th annual Shaheed Kartar Singh Memorial Tournament organised at Sarabha village, near here. “I will send more funds but make sure that the construction is completed by the next anniversary of the martyr,” said Badal. On November 16, 1999, Badal, then Chief Minister, had announced that a memorial on the pattern of Jallianwala Bagh would be constructed at a cost of Rs 1.25 crore on a two-acre plot in the memory of Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha at his native village. The Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha Memorial Committee had urged Jagdish Singh Garcha, former minister and MLA from the Kilaraipur constituency, to impress upon Badal to get the memorial completed before the next birth anniversary of the youngest martyr of the region. A cousin of the martyr, Jagdish Kaur, died in June 2005 without seeing her dream come true. She had been agitating against the respective state governments demanding the completion of work on the memorial. The work on the memorial was started by the Akali government in 2000 after a lot of agitation by Jagdish Kaur. A grant of Rs 1.01 crore was announced for the same and Rs 40 lakh were released in three instalments. Later, not even a single penny was released. The archaeological department of Punjab had also declared the house of the martyr a protected monument in 1998, after which it remained abandoned for want of repair. When the idea for the memorial came up, the then government asked the relatives of the martyr to make available certain memorabilia for it. The ancestral house of the martyr was also declared a national monument so that future generations could get inspiration from him. The Tribune had carried stories about stagnation of construction work on the memorial. Comments (0) >> Show/Hide comments Write comment Show/Hide comment form Name Email Website Comment Add Comment

 

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