In a historic move, days ahead of the Republic Day, the Amar Jawan Jyoti in the lawns of India Gate will be extinguished and merged with the flame at the National War Memorial on Friday.
New Delhi: In a historic move, days ahead of the Republic Day, the Amar Jawan Jyoti in the lawns of India Gate will be extinguished and merged with the flame at the National War Memorial on Friday.
“The flame of Amar Jawan Jyoti at India Gate will be extinguished and put on fire at the National War Memorial in a ceremony on Friday,” an Indian Army officer told.
Officials said the ceremony would be presided over by Chief of the Integrated Defense Staff Air Marshal Balabhadra Radha Krishna who would douse the two fires.
The India Gate Memorial was built by the British Government in the memory of the soldiers of the British Indian Army who lost their lives between 1914-1921.
However, the Amar Jawan Jyoti was included in the memorial structure after India’s massive victory over Pakistan in the 1970s in which 93,000 soldiers of the enemy country surrendered.
After a long wait and many 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 at the War Memorial, all military ceremonial events were shifted from the India Gate Memorial to it.
The National War Memorial bears the names of all the Indian defense personnel who lost their lives in various operations from the 1947-48 war with Pakistan to the Galwan Valley conflict with Chinese troops.
The walls of the memorial also bear the names of soldiers who lost their lives in counter-insurgency operations.
(with agency input)