Confer Bharat Ratna on Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev: Manish Tewari writes to PM

Congress leader Manish Tewari has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to confer the Bharat Ratna on freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. In a letter to Modi, he also requested him to formally confer the honorific title of Shaheed-E-Azam on them and dedicate the Chandigarh airport located in Mohali in memory of Bhagat Singh.

"I would like to draw your kind attention towards the fact that Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev inspired an entire generation of patriots by their unrelenting resistance to British Imperialism and later their supreme sacrifice on the 23rd of March, 1931," the MP from Anandpur Sahib in Punjab said.

"It would be in the fitness of things that if on 26th of January, 2020 all three of them are honoured with the 'Bharat Ratna'; they are formally conferred with the honorific of 'Shaheed-E-Azam'; the Chandigarh Airport located in Mohali is named as Shaheed-E-Azam Bhagat Singh Airport, Chandigarh (Mohali). This gesture would touch the hearts and souls of 124 crore Indians," he said in his letter dated October 25.

Tewari shared his letter on Twitter too.

His suggestions come in the wake of the BJP in Maharashtra demanding that the Bharat Ratna be conferred on Hindutva ideologue Veer Savarkar, which triggered a row.

Earlier, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi had also called for conferring the Bharat Ratna on Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev.