Direct route to martyr’s house: Shaheed Sukhdev Trust flays delay in process, threatens hunger strike

Nikhil Bhardwaj
Tribune News Service
Ludhiana, August 4
The Shaheed Sukhdev Thapar Memorial Trust condemned the slow process of providing a direct route to the birthplace of Shaheed Sukhdev Thapar from Chaura Bazaar and levelled serious allegations against the district administration and the Municipal Corporation.
Ashok Thapar, national president of the trust and descendant of Shaheed Sukhdev Thapar, said if the final award for land acquisition was not announced before August 15, all government programmes scheduled for Independence Day would be boycotted. If there was any further delay in acquiring land to provide a direct way to the martyr’s birthplace, the trust would be forced to go on a hunger strike.
He said five properties were required to provide a direct route to the martyr’s birthplace from Chaura Bazaar. Of these, owners of three properties had voluntarily handed over documents of donating their land in writing to the district administration while owners of the two properties had also agreed to take compensation for their properties.
Despite the fact that there is no problem in acquiring land for a direct path, officials of the Municipal Corporation and the district administration and the SDM concerned were running away from their responsibility and unnecessarily delaying the process of providing a direct way to the martyr’s birthplace,” Thapar said.
He also accused Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann of giving a step-motherly treatment to the birthplace of Shaheed Sukhdev Thapar as he alleged that Mann went to memorials of martyrs such as Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh, Shaheed Kartar Singh Sarabha and Shaheed Udham Singh on their martyrdoms and birth anniversaries but in his past two-and-a-half-year tenure, he did not consider it appropriate to visit the birthplace of Shaheed Sukhdev Thapar.