Lieutenant General (Retd), Former Director-General of Military Operations (DGMO) Indian Army, Vinod Bhatia on Friday hailed the Centre's decision to merge Amar Jawan Jyoti with the War Memorial Memorial and said: "it is a good decision".
"Today is a great occasion, the Amar Jawan Jyoti at India Gate is being merged with the National War Memorial. It's a good decision," Bhatia said.
"Amar Jawan Jyoti honours our soldiers in 1971 for 50 years. We have a National War Memorial which honours nearly 25000 soldiers, sailors who made the supreme sacrifices in defence of India. The time has come to shift the Amar Jawan Jyoti to merge it with National War Memorial," he said.
The 1971 war veteran and former Army Deputy Chief Lieutenant General JBS Yadava (Retd) also supported the Centre's decision and said "Amar Jawan Jyoti should be merged with National War Memorial. There should be only one war memorial in the country."
"There should be no politics on the merger of Amar Jawan Jyoti and National War Memorial. It has become a trend to give a political angle to every initiative done by the Centre," Yadava said.
The Amar Jawan Jyoti flame at the India Gate would be extinguished and merged with the flame at the National War Memorial today.
"The Amar Jawan Jyoti flame at India Gate will be extinguished and merged with the flame at the National War Memorial on Friday in a ceremony," said an Indian Army official toon Thursday.
The ceremony would be presided over by the Integrated Defence Staff chief Air Marshal Balabadhra Radha Krishna who would merge the two flames, officials said.
The India Gate memorial was built by the British government in memory of the British Indian Army soldiers who lost their lives between 1914-1921.
However, the Amar Jawan Jyoti was included in the memorial structure in the 1970s after the massive victory of India over Pakistan in which 93,000 troops of the enemy country surrendered.
After a long wait and multiple considerations, the National War Memorial was built in the India Gate complex by the Narendra Modi government and was inaugurated in 2019.
After the inauguration of the building in War memorial, all military ceremonial events were shifted to it from the India Gate memorial.
The National War Memorial has the names of all the Indian defence personnel who have lost their lives in different operations from the 1947-48 war with Pakistan to the Galwan valley clash with Chinese troops.
The names of troops who lost lives in the counter-terrorist operations are also included on the walls of the memorial.
( With inputs from ANI )
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