Making all out attempts to woo the Dalit community constituting 31 per cent of Punjab population — highest in India, the SAD-BJP Government on Friday announced to open 2,600 “free medicine shops” across the State to be named after Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar.
In addition, the forthcoming World Kabaddi Cup, scheduled to be held in November, has been christened as ‘Dr Ambedkar World Kabaddi Cup’.
Announcing this, Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal on Friday said that Punjab is the only state which has implemented the ideology of Dr Ambedkar in true spirit.
He was addressing a fourth seminar as part of series of six seminars to commemorate the 125th birth anniversary of ‘Bharat Ratna’ Dr Ambedkar at Guru Nanak Dev University.
“The subject pertaining to the life histories and philosophy of the great personalities would be made mandatory in al universities of Punjab in order to enable the coming generations to adopt his lofty ideals for their personality development,” said Sukhbir.
He said that Punjab carries forward the proud legacy of secularism in accordance with which the people belonging to different castes, races and
religions live peacefully with each other with equal respect for every religion which is amply clear from the non-occurrence of riots even in times of disturbance. Punjab Government has constructed huge memorials for the sake of preserving culture and traditions of the State besides carrying out beautification projects such as Bhagwan Valmiki memorial at Ramtirath, Guru
Ravidass memorial at Khuralgarh and beautification of Durgiana mandir.
“Punjab has 31 percent of dalit population whereas throughout the country, the ratio comes to just 16 percent” he said.