‘Sainya Dham’, a one-of-its-kind war memorial in the country that will come up in the next two years in Dehradun, will be special in many ways.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will lay the foundation stone of the memorial, which is the brainchild of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday.
The state’s soldier welfare minister Ganesh Joshi said the huge entry gate of Sainya Dham will be named after the country’s first CDS, General Bipin Rawat, who died in a tragic helicopter crash last week. “It will be a tribute to General Rawat who will always remain in our hearts,” he said.
General Bipin Rawat’s roots lie in Uttarakhand and his ancestral village is Sain. The area’s panchayat block head, Mahendra Rana, wrote a letter to the chief minister, requesting to build a war memorial in the General’s village as well.
While addressing a public meeting in 2019, the prime minister had mooted an idea that Uttarakhand, known for char dhams of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Yamnotri and Gangotri, should have a fifth dham — ‘Sainya Dham’ — in memory of soldiers. A large number of soldiers from Uttarakhand serve in the Indian armed forces and several ex-servicemen too live in the state.
Joshi said a total of Rs 63 crore will be spent to construct the war memorial which will be completed by the end of 2023. In a bid to connect with families of former soldiers, the ruling BJP organised ‘Shaheed Samman Yatra’ and collected soil from the home of 1,763 martyrs in the last two months. The soil will be used in the war memorial. During the foundation-laying function, close to 200 family members of serving and retired soldiers will also be felicitated.
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