Park named after woman IAF officer

Deepkamal Kaur/tns

Jalandhar, January 13

Nakodar town celebrated Lohri in a different way today. The administration officials, civic authorities and public gathered at a park in Garden Colony and named it after the first woman Indian Air Force (IAF) officer from the town – Sqn Ldr Shivamjit Kaur Sandhu.

The IAF officer, her husband Sqn Ldr Vivek Tewari, her parents and residents of her entire colony came out and celebrated Lohri in the park this afternoon.

SDM Amrit Singh, who had mooted this kind of initiative by earlier naming a road after Capt Sonia Arora, the first woman Army officer from Nakodar, has made a second attempt of the kind under the “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao scheme”.

Nakodar Municipal Council president Aditya Bhatara said, “We had passed a resolution for naming the park after Sq Ldr Sandhu in September, which finally got cleared from the Local Bodies Department three days ago. It was a sheer chance that when the clearance came, Sqn Ldr Sandhu too was at her parents’ place for a break. We proposed to hold the function on Lohri, to which she agreed. A space for the park had been earmarked in the colony and we got it readied in just three days with boundary wall, inter-locking tiles, foliage planting and other works done within three days. The residents and the general public appreciated the step taken by us.”

At the function, Sqn Ldr Sandhu shared her excitement with the young girls attending the event, “There is nothing that the girls of a small town like Nakodar cannot do. The girls in Delhi also study the same books, which we read here. All we need to do is to grasp and retain as much as we can with thorough understanding.”

Great granddaughter of Naik Lal Singh, who laid down his life in the Saragarhi battle, Sqn Ldr Sandhu had studied at St Judes School in Nakodar till Class VI. After that, she had moved to Army Public School in Beas. She pursued her BSc in computer sciences from Lyallpur Khalsa College in Jalandhar. She appeared for the IAF entrance test and cleared it. It has been seven years since she joined the Air Force and is now posted at the Pathankot Air Force base.