NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday unfurled the Tricolour at the Red Fort to mark the 75th anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s declaration of ‘Azad Hind Government’. The PM also inaugurated a renovated national police memorial and a new police museum and unveiled a plaque to mark the occasion. The plaque will be kept at barrack number 3 of the Red Fort, the place where members of the Azad Hind Fauj faced trial.
At the Red Fort, the PM, wearing the Azad Hind Fauj cap, took aim at the Congress for neglecting the contributions of Netaji and other stalwarts of India’s freedom movement, saying that several good sons of the country like Bose, Dr B R Ambedkar and Sardar Patel were forgotten “to glorify one family”.
Attacking the Nehru-Gandhi family without naming them, Modi said post-Independence, India’s policies were based on the British system as things were seen through British prism. “Today I can definitively say that in the later decades of independent India, if the country had got the guidance of personalities like Subhas Babu, Sardar Patel, the conditions would vary greatly,” he said.
The PM also announced a national award in Netaji’s name for police personnel for exemplary work in rescue and relief operations during times of disaster. The award would be presented on Netaji’s birth anniversary, January 23, every year.
Dedicating the police memorial to all the policemen who sacrificed their lives for the nation since Independence, Modi lashed out at previous UPA governments for their failure to build the memorial. October 21 is observed as Police Commemoration Day every year in the memory of the policemen killed at Hot Springs in Ladakh by the Chinese troops in 1959Mrime Minister also said that India never eyes anyone else’s territory but will hit back with “double the force” if its sovereignty is ever challenged.
Listing his government’s efforts towards providing the armed forces with better technology and latest weapons and the soldiers with better facilities, he said, “We are heading towards building an army which was once envisioned by Netaji.”