Asit Jolly
It's a shame! Eight interminable years after its foundation stone was unveiled by the then home minister P Chidambaram in February 2009, the museum dedicated to India's most admired icon from the national freedom movement, Shaheed Bhagat Singh, is far from being completed.
The new museum, meant to replace the existing single-hall gallery housing artifacts associated with Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev, was planned as a state-of-the-art facility with true-to-life recreations of moments from the freedom fighter's short but significant life.
Sadly, eight years after it was announced amid much fanfare, all that's been achieved on the 10.62 acres acquired for the project outside Khatkar Kalan — Bhagat Singh's ancestral village in the Punjab district named after him — is the empty shell of a building.
Residents say work has been stopped several times consequent to the indifference of successive state and central governments. “There is simply no money to take it forward,” says an official, admitting that contractors withdrew from the project after funds stopped flowing about nine months ago. State tourism department officials say the new deadline for completing the Bhagat Singh museum is March 2018, but they concede that it would entirely depend on the release of funds from Delhi.
And while state and central authorities have literally twiddled thumbs on this one, these eight years have witnessed the previous Punjab government deploying liberal central funding to rush to complete a number of far more expensive memorials and museums.
The Rs 225 crore Virasat-e-Khalsa or Khalsa Heritage Memorial Museum at Anandpur Sahib and the 328 feet tall Fateh Burj (victory tower commemorating Banda Singh Bahadur) at Chhappar Chhiri outside Chandigarh in November-December 2011 just months ahead of the February 2012 polls. And towards the end of its second term, the Parkash Singh Badal-led Shiro mani Akali Dal-BJP government hastened to open a war memorial in Amritsar; a part of the Jang-e-Azadi Memorial at Kartarpur near Jalandhar; a Rs 250 crore Balmiki temple complex at Ram Tirth (Amritsar); and the Heritage Street and Golden Temple Plaza in Old Amritsar.
Clearly, freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh work well for political photo opportunities on birthdays and martyrdom anniversaries, but they don't fetch votes in elections, and so not really a priority for politicians.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)
