Congress' year-long celebration of 50th anniversary of Bangladesh Liberation War to conclude on Dec 15

The year-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Bangladesh Liberation War will formally conclude with a big function in the national capital and programmes in all districts of the country next week, the Congress said on Friday.

Party president Sonia Gandhi will be the chief guest at the ceremonial function on December 15 in New Delhi, AICC general secretary (Organisation) K C Venugopal said in a statement.

He also said that former Congress president Rahul Gandhi will address a big rally in Dehradun on December 16 in which a large number of 1971 war veterans and other military veterans will be present.

Similarly, programmes like honouring war veterans and war widows, and commemorating the 1971 war will be conducted in a befitting manner at district level across the country on December 16, he said.

The liberation war celebrations which were delayed due to Covid started in mid-July with a district level meeting at Panchkula (Haryana) on July 10.

The Congress has organised over 100 district level meetings till date, the party said, adding that the state-level functions commenced on November 16 with a meeting in Nagaland (Kohima) followed by other states and are continuing.

Maximum district meets have been held in Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu, Venugopal said.

Though the formal concluding ceremony will be held on December 15, several states, which have not concluded their state level functions, have been asked to continue up to December 31 and wind up the programmes with honouring of martyr families as also war veterans, he said.

The programmes shall also continue at the district and block levels in some of the states like Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan beyond the end of this year, as a large number of soldiers come from these states.

In all the meetings held so far, a large number of military veterans have enthusiastically participated and have been honoured, he said.

Venugopal said the programmes are aimed at creating awareness about the liberation war under then prime minister Indira Gandhi and led by then military head Gen Sam Manekshaw.