New Delhi: The government will allocate space for a memorial of former prime minister Manmohan Singh and this has been communicated to his family and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, the Union home ministry said on Friday night.
In a late-night release titled “Facts of the matter regarding memorial for Former Prime Minister Late Dr Manmohan Singh”, the ministry said the government received a request to allocate space for a memorial for Singh from the Congress chief.
Immediately after the Cabinet meeting, Union Home Minister Amit Shah communicated to Kharge and the family of Manmohan Singh that the government would allocate space for the memorial.
In the meanwhile, cremation and other formalities can happen because a Trust has to be formed and space has to be allocated to it, the home ministry said.
Singh, who headed the Congress-led UPA government and is credited with economic reforms, passed away on Thursday at the age of 92.
He was India’s prime minister for 10 years between 2004 and 2014.
The Congress on Friday said that not finding a location for the cremation and memorial of Singh was a deliberate insult to the country’s first Sikh prime minister.
The party raised the issue after the home ministry said Singh’s last rites would be held at New Delhi’s Nigambodh Ghat at 11.45 am on Saturday with full state honours.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said party president Mallikarjun Kharge wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to conduct Singh’s last rites at a location where a memorial could be built to honour his legacy.
“The people of our country are simply unable to understand why the Government of India could not find a location for his cremation and memorial that is befitting of his global stature, record of outstanding achievements, and exemplary service to the nation for decades,” Ramesh said in a post on X.
“This is nothing but a deliberate insult to the first Sikh Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh,” the Congress leader said.
Kharge wrote the letter after speaking to Modi about setting up a memorial for Singh, who was a two-term prime minister revered by the people of the country.
“Apropos our telephonic conversation today morning, wherein I made a request to hold Dr Manmohan Singh’s last rites, which will take place tomorrow i.e. 28th December 2024, at his final resting place that would be a sacrosanct venue for memorial of the great son of India.
“This is in keeping with such tradition of having memorials of statesmen and former Prime Ministers at the very place of their funerals,” Kharge said in his two-page letter.
The Congress chief said Dr Manmohan Singh holds a highly revered place in the psyche of the country and the people of this nation, and his contributions and achievements were phenomenal.
He also said that Dr Singh’s erudition on economic and fiscal matters came from his vast experience as the governor of the Reserve Bank of India, chief economic advisor to the government of India and in various other capacities in several organisations, and the respect and regard that world leaders had for him bears testimony to this fact.
Kharge said Singh’s wise counsel, leadership and contribution in mitigating the global economic financial crisis is well-acknowledged. He also recalled President Obama’s words when as the US president, he mentioned that “whenever the Indian prime minister speaks, the whole world listens to him”.
He also said that when the nation was in the throes of a grave economic crisis, it was Dr Manmohan Singh, along with former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao, who took India out of the crisis and also led the country towards economic prosperity and stability.
The nation today reaps the benefits of the robust economic foundations built by them, Kharge noted.
“Coming from a humble background and having experienced the pains and sufferings of the Partition, it is through his sheer grit and determination that he rose to become one of the leading statesmen of the world. I hope and trust that befitting stature of Dr Manmohan Singh, request to have the funeral of Dr Singh at a place where his memorial can be built, will be acceded,” Kharge said in the letter.
(With inputs from PTI)
