PM to chair panels formed to celebrate Patel, Munda, Vajpayee’s special birth anniversaries

Besides PM Modi as its chairperson, the committees will include former Presidents Pratibha Patil and Ramnath Kovind, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and former PM HD Deve Gowda as key members.

The 150th birth anniversary of Sardar Patel, freedom fighter and country’s first Deputy PM, falls on October 31 this year. Tribal icon Birsa Munda, who led one of the earliest tribal rebellions against British rule in 1899, was born on November 15, 1875, and this year marks his 150th birth anniversary. The birth centenary celebrations of Vajpayee, born on December 25, 1924, started December 24 last year.

Officials said the government plans to mark the special anniversaries of all three icons in a big way through events, seminars, speeches and dialogue across the country. Among the Governors and Lieutenant-Governors included in the committees are S Abdul Nazeer, Governor of Andhra Pradesh; Admiral D K Joshi, L-G of Andaman & Nicobar islands, Lakshman Prasad Acharya, Assam Governor, Arif Mohammed Khan, Bihar Governor, Ramen Deka, Chhattisgarh Governor and Acharya Dev Vrat, the Governor of Gujarat.

As many as 19 state Chief Ministers are part of the panels, including Nitish Kumar (Bihar), Himanta Biswa Sarma (Assam), Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal), Mohan Charan Majhi (Odisha), Manik Saha (Tripura), M K Stalin (Tamil Nadu), Bhupendra Patel (Gujarat), Sukhwinder Sukhu (Himachal Pradesh) and Hemant Soren (Jharkhand).

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Home Minister Amit Shah, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Health Minister J P Nadda and Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan are among the 22 Union ministers included as committee members.
The panels also have MPs, government secretaries, sportspersons, authors and academicians as members.
Meetings of the three committees will be held in the coming days to chalk out a detailed plan and also work out key dates for functions to be held in different cities.

As per the Ministry’s gazette notification, the committees will “approve policies/plans, programmes and supervise and guide the commemorations”, and also “decide on the broad dates for the detailed programme of celebration”.
“The recommendations of the committees will be considered by the government for implementation, subject to extant rules, instructions and practices,” say the notifications.