Shaheed Madan Lal Dhingra memorial misses deadline
Neeraj Bagga
TRIBUNE NEWS SERIVE
AMRITSAR, MAY 7
The construction of Shahid Madan Lal Dhingra memorial has missed the deadline.
Municipal corporation officials, responding to an RTI query, informed in March 2022 that the work order had been released for the project and it was to be completed within eight months. The stipulated period of eight months has already been completed.
About 2,000 square yards have been carved out of the Gole Bagh to raise the memorial. The delay occurred despite the fact that Rs 2.57 crore was sanctioned to raise the memorial.
The entrance to the memorial is locked. A statue of Dhingra had been installed and some rooms were constructed beside it. All of them were awaiting inauguration to throw it to the public.
Not far away from the memorial lies the site of Dhingra’s house. He was born at the house situated inside the Sikandari Gate here on February 18, 1883. The lane is now officially known as Madan Lal Dhingra Marg. A colony and a park on the GT road area have already been named after him, besides the inter-state bus terminal.
Earlier, former cabinet minister Lakshmi Kanta Chawla had initiated a prolonged campaign to announce his ancestral house a memorial, but it did not elicit the desired result. Contemporary generation of Dhingra family had sold the house nearly a decade ago and the new buyer had demolished the original structure in 2012. The memorial should be opened soon to pay tributes to the martyr who was executed at the age of 26 in London in 1909.
