The proposed lay out of the War Memorial
The Ministry of Defence will soon invite international bids for constructing the National War Memorial at Prince's Park, near India Gate in the heart of the capital, after the NDA government cleared the decks for the project.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, while presenting the maiden budget of the Narendra Modi government yesterday, had set aside Rs 100 crore for the memorial, a longstanding demand of the armed forces.
Although a basic design and concept for the proposed memorial is available with the Indian Army, the authorities want to explore more possibilities.
Defence ministry sources said the proposed concept includes a museum and a walkabout. Some of the images from a presentation made to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by the Army last month have been accessed by NDTV.
Here are some suggestions made in the presentation:
- Landscaping/sloping up of lawns around the Chhattri (canopy) to create retaining walls for writing names of martyrs who gave up their lives in the post-independence era
- No disturbance at all to the existing structures of India Gate and the Chhattri
- Construction of Shradhanjali Kaksh (Tributes Hall) and auditorium at Prince's Park and Armed Forces Museum at the Jodhpur Hostel (adjacent to, but outside, the India Gate complex) and connecting these with the war memorial through underground passages