Certain reports about the government removing the Amar Jawan Jyoti from India Gate and installing it at the National War Memorial resulted in a backlash with a section of people questioning the government's move.?The government justified the move, claiming that "a lot of misinformation" had been spread.
"The flame of the Amar Jawan Jyoti is not being extinguished. It is being merged with the flame at the National War Memorial. It was an odd thing to see that the flame at Amar Jawan Jyoti paid homage to the martyrs of the 1971 and other wars but none of their names are present there," said government sources.
The Amar Jawan Jyoti was built as a memorial for Indian soldiers lost in battle during the 1971 Indo-Pak war, which India won and led to Bangladesh's formation. On January 26, 1972, it was opened by then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
It's a memorial with an inverted bayonet and a soldier's helmet atop it, as well as an eternal flame blazing alongside it.
The Amar Jawan Jyoti included a black marble pedestal and a cenotaph that served as a grave for the unnamed soldier. A soldier's combat helmet was placed on top of an inverted L1A1 self-loading weapon with a bayonet on the pedestal.
The flame at the Amar Jawan Jyoti is kept ablaze throughout the year. On each side of the cenotaph, there are four flames.?
Throughout the year, only one flame is lit. On Independence Day and Republic Day, however, all of the flames are ignited. The flame was kept alive by liquified petroleum gas until 2006, when it was replaced by piped natural gas.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the National War Memorial on February 25, 2019, which was built across 40 acres near India Gate at a cost of Rs 176 crore.
The perpetual flame is lit beneath the 15.5-meter obelisk at the War Memorial. The names of 25,942 soldiers are written on granite tablets in gilded lettering in four concentric circles: "Amar Chakra," "Veerta Chakra," "Tyag Chakra," and "Rakshak Chakra."
According to the government, the National War Memorial honours soldiers who died in the 1962 Indo-China War, the 1947, 1965, and 1971 Indo-Pak conflicts, the Indian Peace Keeping Force operations in Sri Lanka and the 1999 Kargil Conflict, as well as those serving in UN peacekeeping missions.
In addition to shifting the flame, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated on Friday morning that a statue of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose will be placed beneath the canopy close to the India Gate. The new sculpture will stand at a height of 28 feet. Modi announced that a hologram statue of Bose will be placed beneath the canopy until the monument is finished, which he will unveil on January 23. A statue of King George V once adorned the canopy, but it was taken down in 1968.
In 1931, the British constructed the India Gate, also known as the All India War Memorial. It was built as a tribute to the approximately 90,000 Indian troops who had perished in various battles and campaigns for the British Indian Army up to that point.
On the memorial honouring them, the names of more than 13,000 fallen troops are listed. The Amar Jawan Jyoti was erected beneath it by the government in 1972 as a memorial for Indian troops slain in wars.
Officials have stated that there are various causes for this. Since the political uproar erupted, government sources have indicated that the light will not be extinguished, but rather relocated to be fused with the one at the National War Memorial.
The perpetual light, according to sources, paid tribute to the soldiers slain in the 1971 War but did not identify their names, and the India Gate is a "symbol of our colonial past." The National War Memorial houses the names of all Indian martyrs from all conflicts, including the 1971 war and wars before and after it. As a result, having the flame there paying tribute to martyrs is a great honour.
Officials from the defence establishment claimed that after the National War Memorial is completed in 2019, Indian political and military leaders, as well as foreign dignitaries, will pay their respects to the dead warriors at the National War Memorial, as they did at the Amar Jawan Jyoti previously.
With this modification, it was considered that two flames were no longer required, despite the fact that officials had said unequivocally that both flames would be kept alive when the National War Memorial was created.
Another reason is because the Amar Jawan Jyoti is so deeply ingrained in the country's emotional consciousness that the government's new war memorial did not receive the attention it had hoped for, and the government wants to promote the new memorial it constructed in 2019.
It's also part of the government's reconstruction of the Central Vista, which includes India Gate, the Amar Jawan Jyoti, and the National War Memorial.
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