Pride of place for four greats in Council Hall

BANGALORE: Come December 5, members of both houses of the legislature will see visuals and hear speeches of four eminent personalities - Swami Vivekananda, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Sir M Visvesvaraya - when their life-size paintings will be unveiled in the Karnataka Legislative Council.“We have a grand photograph of Gandhi above the chairman’s podium. I wanted portraits of some outstanding personalities too. We decided to have photographs of India’s greatest spiritual leader Swami Vivekananda; Bose, greatest freedom fighter; Shastri who gave a new dimension to both defence and agriculture and engineer-statesman Sir M V,” legislative council chairman D H Shankaramurthy told Express on Saturday.He said: “The unveiling ceremony has been planned in a special way. We have obtained the speeches of all four leaders which will be played when the respective portrait is unveiled.” Swami Vivekananda’s speech delivered in the world parliament of religions at Chicago will be played when his portrait is unveiled, Lal Bahadur Shastri’s clarion call “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan” and his morale boosting speech that enabled the Indian army to defeat Pakistan in the 1965 war will be played. Netaji’s famous speech, “Give me your blood, I will get freedom” will be played, as also Sir M V’s speech emphasising the importance of quality and quantum of work.