The Kendrapada Ex-Servicemen Association celebrated the Bijay Diwas in a unique way here on Friday.
Association members took out a well-decorated chariot, affixed with photographs of 1971 India-Pakistan war and text of surrender, to motivate young goers to love the motherland and to remember the sacrifices of the martyrs of the Indo-Pak 1971 war.
The chariot was flagged off by district Collector Muralidhar Mallick at the Old Bus Stand. The association also felicitated many war veterans, who had fought the war.
Participating in the Vijay Diwas, Captain Bhikari Charan Mohanty remembered those days of war started on December 3, 1971. He was in Rajasthan’s Barmer sector then. As he was working in engineering sector, he along with other soldiers laid a 12-km-long railway line inside Pakistan to provide drinking water to the soldiers. He said the then Indian Army General Manik Shah on December 16, 1971 directed to air-drop leaflets in East Pakistan asking Pakistan troops to cease fire and surrender before the Indian Army else the Indian Army would destroy the Pakistani soldiers.
The Instrument of Surrender of Pakistani forces stationed in East Pakistan was signed at the Ramna Race Course in Dhaka on the very day by lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora, General Officer Commanding-in-chief of Eastern Command of the Indian Army and lieutenant General AAK Niazi, Commander of Pakistani forces in East Pakistan. As Aurora accepted the surrender, the surrounding crowds on the Race Course began shouting anti-Niazi and anti-Pakistan slogans, Captain Mohanty remembered. Similarly, Havildar Prafulla Kumar Swain, another 1971 Indo-Pakistan War veteran recounted the golden days of fighting for the country and winning the war.