Ex-PM IK Gujral’s 100th birth anniversary today

Deepkamal Kaur

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Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, December 3

Coming to Jalandhar as a refugee from Pakistan and rising to the position of Prime Minister of India, IK Gujral is remembered fondly by city residents. As his 100th birth anniversary falls tomorrow, two functions have been planned here in his memory to recall the immense contribution that he made towards the city.

The city’s bigwigs, politicians and educationists remember Gujral as a down-to-earth person. “Even though he rose to become the Prime Minister of India, he never forgot his roots. He was the true son of the soil. Gujral’s biggest contribution towards the city was getting the proposed Doordarshan Centre for Amritsar shifted to Jalandhar as the Union I&B Minister,” recalled ex-BJP minister Manorajan Kalia.

He said, “He was always peace loving and during the 1980s when Punjab was boiling, I had seen him getting posters with the pigeons pasted on the walls along the main roads here. I and my father were also known to his father Avtar Narain Gujral. His mother Pushpa Gujral also remained the municipal committee member here.”

Pushpa Gujral Science City in Kapurthala and Pushpa Gujral Nari Niketan in Jalandhar stand in the name of his mother. The first state technical university, Punjab Technical University, was named IK Gujral PTU after his death. “We have given a proposal to the administration to name the road from Kapurthala Chowk to Science City after him,” says Surinder Saini, a social activist, who has worked with him in Jalandhar.

Residents share that when Gujral became the Foreign Minister after quitting the Congress and winning on the Janata Dal ticket, he did a lot of development works for the city. “He got an ROB constructed at Rama Mandi, providing a big relief to the residents on either side of the railway lines. He turned slum-like Garha village into a clean city locality by getting the sewerage laid. It was owing to his closeness to the then Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, he had got Swaran Shatabdi train started from here, originally with only seven coaches. He contributed towards carving out the popular Bhagat Singh Colony as the Union Housing and Planning Minister,” Saini shared.

Gujral’s son Naresh Gujral had unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha elections from Jalandhar in 2004. Now a RS member and a senior Akali leader, he shares his memories during his father’s political career, “More than his tenure as the Prime Minister of the country, he enjoyed the post of the Foreign Minister that came his way twice. Being a PM of the coalition government, there were lots of pushes and pulls. At home, he was a generous father and a true family man.

“He always told us one thing that if I will help you, you will never learn to stand on your feet. It is in his memory that we are organising an event tomorrow evening in Delhi where former president Pranab Mukherjee, former PM Dr Manmohan Singh, former RS member Dr Karan Singh, Union Minister of External Affairs Jaishankar and three former foreign secretaries are coming for a discussion on India’s foreign policy.”

Clearly, the popular Gujral doctrine of foreign policy formulated by the former PM and excerpts from his autobiography — Matters of Discretion — will be part of the discussion.