New Delhi: Even as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Vice President Hamid Ansari and BJP leader L K Advani today offered floral tributes at the samadhi of former prime minister Inder Kumar Gujarat on his death anniversary, his son Naresh Gujral demanded that a separate memorial be built for the leader.
Naresh Gujral, presently an Akali Dal MP, has described as “bizarre” the government stand that separate memorials are no longer being developed for departed leaders.
Naresh Gujral has the backing of BJP leader Arun Jaitley.
Naresh Gujral said that he did not want to create a controversy as his father was a non-controversial person but “the government is taking a bizarre stand.”
In his reply to Jaitley on the issue on November 26, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that since August 2000, following a Cabinet decision, “separate samadhis are no longer being developed for departed leaders”.
Gujaral, however, took strong objection to it saying that this appears to have been done “only in the case of non-Congress Prime Ministers”.
“From the government's stand, it seems that they also want to remove the Samadhi that was built at the first place. The reply that has come from the government is bizarre,” he told PTI.
In his letter to Jaitley, the Prime Minister also said, “Earlier this year in January 2013, the government approved a proposal for the construction of a permanent site to hold the last rites of departed national leaders. This site, named Rashtriya Smriti will be developed at the Samadhi complex in New Delhi and there will be a provision for the placement of suitable plaques in remembrance of the departed leaders.
