The National Military Memorial Park in Bengaluru which was asked to be unveiled on August 15 this year looks all set to miss the deadline, as the 75-foot obelisk delaying the project, is yet to be installed there.
The obelisk is currently in Koira, Devanahalli taluk of Bengaluru, around 46 kilometres away from the Memorial Park. The Park was commissioned by the state government in 2009. However, in spite of repeated demands to move the stone to the memorial park in central Bengaluru, it is yet to be done.
A group of citizens, who are children of military personnel, started a campaign #InMyFather'sName last month to once again urge the state government to transport the stone and unveil the memorial by August 15.
But with one day to go, the task of moving the obelisk is yet to be taken up by the state government. The group have also started a campaign tweeting #DontFakeRespect to CM Kumaraswamy. The group pointed out that the memorial park can only be inaugurated after the stone has been moved and has written to CM Kumaraswamy highlighting the issue. "The Veeragallu or hero stone which weighs over 500 tonnes and is 75 feet tall lies hardly 45 km away at Devanahalli, fully sculpted and complete, but not yet shifted. The Memorial can only be inaugurated after the Veeragallu is installed," reads a letter from the group to the CM.
The group further reasoned that a similarly large Hanuman statue was transported from Kolar to Kacharakanahalli earlier this year. The mammoth 62-feet tall, 750-tonne Hanuman statue was transported from Kolar in a 300-wheel vehicle on April 7. This inconvenienced commuters after a road was dug up just so that the vehicle could pass through a corridor on Hennur Main Road.
Members of the campaigning group say it is a mark of disrespect to the armed forces that the installation of the obelisk has been delayed for so long. "Why is there a delay in transporting the stone which is around 45 minutes away from here? We believe that if the government decided to commission a memorial, then it should complete it," says Priya Chetty Rajagopal, a member of the group campaigning for the completion of the memorial park.
However, the hopes of the campaigners appear to be dashed once again with the obelisk unlikely to be moved any time soon.