Uproar in RS over airport name

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 23

The Rajya Sabha today witnessed heated exchanges over the naming of the Chandigarh airport with Opposition leaders alleging that though it had been decided that the airport would be named after Shaheed Bhagat Singh, the BJP government in Haryana was insisting on christening it after former RSS pracharak Mangal Sen.

Raising the issue during zero hour, Ritabrata Banerjee of the CPM pointed towards the controversy over the name between Punjab and Haryana — both of which have a 24.5 per cent stake each in the airport terminal project.

Banerjee said while the Punjab Government had agreed to christen the airport after Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh, the BJP-led Haryana Government and Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar disagreed, wanting it to be named after Sen, a former Deputy Chief Minister of Haryana.

Joining the issue, Congress leader Pratap Singh Bajwa also demanded a mandatory two-minute silence on the day, every year. Amid angry protests, in which senior leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad of the Congress and Sharad Yadav of the JD-U also took part, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said nobody had ever made such a suggestion.