AAP has carefully strategised to claim the legacy of Bhagat Singh.
New Delhi:
Chandigarh airport will be renamed after freedom fighter Bhagat Singh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced today on his monthly radio address “Mann Ki Baat”. The move is being seen as BJP’s one-up against the Aam Aadmi Party over the martyred legend’s legacy.
“As a tribute to the great freedom fighter, it has been decided that the Chandigarh airport will now be named after Shaheed Bhagat Singh,” PM Modi said.
The Punjab Chief Minister began his term with great pomp and show with a symbolic tribute to the iconic freedom fighter. AAP had hosted Bhagwant Mann’s swearing in ceremony at Khatkar Kalan, the ancestral village of Bhagat Singh. The venue was awash in the colour “Basanti (yellow)”.
Yellow turbans, the trademark of comic-turned-politician Bhagwant Mann, filled the village Khatkar Kalan in response to his call to people to wear “Basanti turbans and dupattas” to his oath. Yellow was the theme of the venue and decor. Bhagat Singh used to wear turbans of the colour, which came to symbolise revolution.
Just a few days into his office, Bhagwant Mann had declared that March 23, the day of Bhagat Singh’s martyrdom, will be declared a public holiday every year.
AAP has carefully strategised to claim the legacy of Bhagat Singh, who’s popular with the youth and in rural North India.
This is also not the first time the proposal to rename the union territory’s airport after Bhagat Singh has been made. The Haryana Assembly, led by the BJP, had in April 2016 unanimously passed a resolution on the same. The state government had said it would soon write to the Union Civil Aviation ministry with the request.
The BJP state government’s move was then percieved as a powerplay against the then ruling Congress in adjacent Punjab. With the airport’s terminal building falling in Punjab’s Mohali town, Punjab government had put up signage of ‘Mohali airport’, upsetting the Haryana government.
The next year, in 2017, ther was an uproar in the Rajya Sabha as the Opposition alleged that the BJP government in Haryana did not want to name it after freedom fighter Bhagat Singh.
CPM lawmaker Ritabrata Banerjee had then said there has been a controversy over the naming of the Chandigarh airport.
“The Punjab Government had agreed that the airport will be named after Shaheed-E-Azam Bhagat Singh, (but) the Haryana Government, the Haryana Chief Minister said ‘no’. They want to name the airport after Mangal Sein,” he said.
Congress had joined in, alleging that the BJP wanted to name it after the party’s Haryana ex-Chief Minister Mangal Sein.
The BJP had, however, denied the allegation, saying they never said so.
The Rs 485-crore airport project is a joint venture of Airports Authority of India (AAI), and governments of Punjab and Haryana.
Source link: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/chandigarh-airport-to-be-renamed-after-bhagat-singh-pm-modi-announces-on-mann-ki-baat-3375509