Finally, Kalpana Chawla gets her due in hometown
CM lays foundation stone of medical college dedicated to Karnal-born astronaut two years after it was announced; Chawla, first Indian woman in space, had died in the Columbia shuttle crash in Feb 2003
KARNAL: After a more than two-year delay, chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda finally laid the foundation stone of the Rs 650-crore Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College here on Sunday afternoon.
In 2 0 1 0, Hooda had announced the medical college in the memory of the Karnalborn astronaut, who along with six others, was killed in the NASA’s Columbia space shuttle crash on February 1, 2003. The medical college had been held up due to bureaucratic hurdles.
On Sunday, the CM lauded Chawala for bringing laurels to her hometown, Karnal, where she had studied up to Class 12: “The medical college is a befitting tribute to Kalpana. She had brought laurels to her hometown by becoming the first Indian woman to be selected by NASA for its space mission.”
The CM said Hospital Services Consultancy Corporation, a Centre government undertaking, would in 25 months complete the medical college, which would cater to north Haryana.
The function was also attended by Kalpana’s father, Banarsi Das Chawla, who was among those on the VVIP podium. But, the team of politicians and bureaucrats at the function chose to ignore him. The CM later presented Chawla with a shawl.
The CM’s speech had political overtones. Hooda took digs at ex-CMs Bhajan Lal of the Congress and Om Prakash Chautala of the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD). The CM said he believed in not naming public institutes after his relatives. “Bhajan Lal established a university in his hometown, Hisar, and dedicated it to his guru Jambeshwar, while Chautala preferred a public university in Sirsa after his father, Chaudhary Devi Lal. But I have not named any institute, established after 2005, in the memory of my ancestors,” he said.
The medical college will be built on 43 acres of land, comprising the existing civil hospital, police lines and land owned by the prisons department. On the occasion, the Lok Sabha member from Karnal, Arvind Sharma, credited the people of Karnal for the establishment of the medical college. “Karnal fought a long battle for it,” he said.
Sharma, meanwhile, also demanded the construction of a bus stand at Gharaunda town, and degree colleges at Taraori and Madlauda towns in Karnal and Panipat districts, respectively.
Later, Hooda laid the foundation stones of a fire station to come up at Sector 4 and the phase 2 of the now-disused Mughal canal. He also unveiled inaugural plaques of the new administrative block of mini-secretariat and a solid waste management plant at Shekhpura village, near here.
The project sites are located at four different places, but the CM preferred to launch them from the police lines grounds for unsaid reasons.