After 11-yr struggle, Sunam railway station named after Udham Singh

Parvesh Sharma

Tribune News Service

Sangrur, November 12

After a struggle of 11 years, Sunam residents have succeeded in getting their railway station renamed to Sunam Udham Singh Wala. Railway authorities issued a notification in this regard two days back.

The then state government had issued a notification on January 25, 2006 to change the name of the town to Sunam Udham Singh Wala, but did not follow up the matter with the Railways properly, causing considerable delay.

The name was changed to pay respect to martyr Udham Singh who belonged to the town.

But when the state authorities failed to take up the matter with the Railways, residents started efforts for it in 2006.

When repeated requests of residents fell on deaf ears, Jatinder Jain, a local RTI activist, requested Punjab and Haryana High Court advocate HC Arora to file a PIL in November 2014.

Jain said, “Arora sent a legal notice to the Railway Ministry for the delay in the matter on December 12, 2014.

“The ministry replied that it did not have any problem with the name change, but it had not received the mandatory proposal and documents from the state government. All steps had only been taken verbally. It made things clear to all that the state government was at fault, not the Railways.”

Jain said Arora again filed a PIL in 2016 and in December, the Punjab Government informed that it had sent a proper proposal to the Union Home Ministry to change the name of the railway station.

“Since December, we have been regularly following up the matter with the Railways,” said Jain.

Dalip Yadav, commercial inspector of Railways posted at Sangrur, confirmed that Railways had issued a notification to change the name of the railway station and they have started the process.

“We will change the board and other material of Sunam station to Sunam Udham Singh Wala on Monday,” said Yadav.