In order to gauge the pulse of party activists in the Garhwal region and exhort them to work in unison for the 2017 Assembly elections, the Uttarakhand Pradesh Congress Committee president Kishore Upadhyaya will start a week-long Garhwal tour on Tuesday.
According to the Uttarakhand PCC media coordinator Surendra Singh Arya, during his tour of Garhwal and other areas, the PCC chief will address gatherings of party workers and discuss measures for strengthening the party and stepping up its activities. Upadhyaya will begin his Garhwal tour on Tuesday by addressing a meeting of the Kotdwar organisational district organised by the district Congress committee after which he would meet party workers in Dugadda on the same evening. On September 17, he would depart from Dugadda and hold meets with party workers in Gumkhal, Satpuli, Patisain, Agroda and Parsundakhal before reaching Pauri in the afternoon where he will participate in a meeting to be held by the district Congress committee at the Ramlila Ground. On September 18, Upadhyaya would leave Pauri for Srinagar where he would interact with party workers before leaving for Rudraprayag where he would participate in a district Congress committee programme. later on the same day he would interact with party workers at Agastyamuni, Ukhimath and Chopta. On September 19 he would leave for Gopeshwar where he would attend a meeting of the district Congress committee before leaving for Gairsain where he would interact with party workers. On September 20, Upadhyaya will leave for Kausani via Chaukhutia, Dwarahat and Someshwar. On September 21, the PCC chief will attend a district Congress committee at Bageshwar and then leave for Ranikhet from where on September 22, he would leave for Bhimtal and interact with party workers at Nainital and Ramnagar before reaching Haldwani from where he would depart for Dehradun.
October 27, 1935 that the Viceroy of India — lord Willingdon — formally inaugurated the Doon School, the first residential public school of the country. The rest, as they say, is history. In his inaugural speech, lord Willingdon, the British Viceroy to India, expressed the feelings of all those who had worked for the school when he said that he was pleased to participate “at this important ceremony of formally opening the first public school in India, to start on its way an educational experiment which I sincerely believe will be of immense value to this country in future years”.
The first headmaster of the school, Arthur Edward Foot, was married on January 5, 1935 and in the same month, he sailed for India on the SS Narkanda. He was not yet 34 years old.
Extracting the best that was offered at each of the great English public schools, he brought to the Doon School the teaching of science which had been started at Harrow; the good teacher –student relationship and the high academic standard developed at Shrewsbury; the system of organised games which had started at Marlborough and the concept of offering a vast number of subjects from Uppingham. He believed that the men who leave the Doon School must be those who were going to lead the nation in all departments of life. Doon School is still seen as the nursery for the nation’s leaders. It was at the Welham Boys’ Preparatory School in the quiet Doon valley that Rajiv Gandhi spent his early school years. From Welham, he went to The Doon School in 1955. Amitabh Bachchan, the star of the millennium, grew up at Sherwood College, Nainital. At The Doon School Founder’s Day some years ago, Bachchan said “Doscos I know that I am addressing future leaders and decision makers of the country.”
A few of the students from the batch which had joined in September 1935 were present at the Platinum Jubilee celebrations of the school held in October 2010.