Chandigarh, June 9
An 18-foot-high bronze statue of Shaheed Bhagat Singh will adorn the main lawn of the Parliament complex soon.

The joint committee of Parliament on the installation of statues of national heroes in the Parliament complex has okayed the proposal in this regard.

The statue of Shaheed Bhagat Singh will be put up near the statues of Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Indira Gandhi and Abul Kalam Azad. The statues of only five eminent persons are 18 ft high in the Parliament complex.

It has taken 60 years for politicians to decide that Shaheed Bhagat Singh’s statue is required to be put up in the Parliament complex. And that too after a lot of prompting from M.S. Gill, member of the Rajya Sabha from Punjab.

Gill had mooted the proposal in this regard to Speaker of the Lok Sabha Somnath Chatterjee in March this year. On March 19, he had written to the Speaker that it was the birth centenary year of Shaheed Bhagat Singh. It would be appropriate to put up the martyr’s statue in Parliament as a tribute to his contribution to the freedom struggle. The letter was signed by 30 MPs belonging to all political parties and also by three ministers. Gill wrote the Speaker again on April 27 in this regard.

Speaking on the phone from Delhi, Gill told The Tribune that he got a letter from the Speaker’s secretariat today with regard to the decision to put up the statue of Shaheed Bhagat Singh in the Parliament complex. The birth anniversary of Shaheed Bhagat Singh falls on September 28. Gill said famed sculptor Ram Sutar had agreed to cast the bronze.

Gill said he and his friends would bear the cost of the statue. “ I have given an assurance to the Speaker and the joint committee on bearing the expenditure ”, he said. Asked whether he would ask the Punjab government to foot the bill on the casting of the statue, Gill said it was up to the state government to think about it.