Haryana nod to naming Chandigarh airport after Bhagat Singh
The Haryana assembly on Thursday unanimously passed a resolution to name Chandigarh airport as Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport.
The Haryana assembly on Thursday unanimously passed a resolution to name Chandigarh airport as Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport.
Haryana education minister Ram Bilas Sharma moved the resolution in the context after the question hour during the budget session, which was unanimously passed by the ruling BJP and the opposition Indian National Lok Dal MLAs. Sharma said that the government would soon write to the Union civil aviation ministry in the context.
The resolution seems to put an end to a tug of war which had been on between both Punjab and Haryana over the issue of the naming of the airport since the past several years. The assemblies of Punjab and Haryana had, in 2009 and 2010, respectively, passed resolutions for naming the airport after martyr Bhagat Singh. Both states have a 24.5% stake each in the airport terminal project.
However, the BJP government headed by Manohar Lal Khattar, which came to power in October 2014, wrote to the civil aviation ministry to name the airport after Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader Mangal Sein who had also been deputy chief minister of Haryana for about two years from 1977.
Upset over this move, Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal wrote to prime minster Narendra Modi in December 2015, terming the move as “distasteful”.
Facing criticism, Khattar later clarified to media that his government had no objection to the airport being named after the martyr and said that since the name of Bhagat Singh had not been finalised, his government had proposed the name of Mangal Sein. He added that Haryana government did not have any objection to name the airport after the martyr.
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