HOMAGE TO BHARAT RATNA SHRI RAJIV GANDHI, PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA.
A women Suicide Bomber assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India at Sriperumbudur, Chennai, in Tamil Nadu, on 21 May 1991 at the age of 46. At least 14 others died. It was carried out by Thenmozhi Rajaratnam (also known as Kalaivani Rajaratnam or Dhanu), a member of the Sri Lankan separatist organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) whose chief was Velupillai Prabhakaran.
Gandhi knew about the threat to his life if he visited Tamil Nadu. Yet the congress workers managing the Poll Campaign ignored the warnings.What precipitated the LTTE’s resolve to eliminate him was his resolve to send IPKF to Sri Linka to help the Government and Singhali’s against the Tamil.
Indian Government’s spy agencies (R&AW) were at some time helping the LTTE acquire training and weapons in insurgency operations. Even their supremo Prabhakaran had travelled to Dehradun, the training camp. He considered it a back-stab by the Indian politician to turn against Tamils in Sri Lanka. There was a looming threat of the Sri Lankan Government seeking help from other countries and India did not want a hostile country occupying that space. Rajiv Gandhi was clearly ill advised in dealing with the hobson’s choice.
Rajiv Gandhi reluctantly came to power on his mother Indira Gandhi’s assasination. He was a professional commercial pilot. He became the PM from 1984 to 1989. As Bharat Ratna Gandhi became the youngest PM at the age of 40.
He was known as the father of Indian Telecom. He supported the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT). Established to develop state-of-the-art telecommunication technology and meet the needs of the Indian telecommunication network.
Rajiv Gandhi promoted science and technology and associated industries. One of the ways was to reduce import quotas, taxes and tariffs on such industries, especially computers, airlines, defence and telecommunications. The Indian Railways was modernised after the introduction of computerised railway tickets.
As he was a youth himself, Rajiv Gandhi sought to empower the youths. Towards that end, the 61st Amendment Act of the Constitution was passed in 1989, lowering the voting age from 21 years to 18 years.
He is credited with laying the foundation of Panchayati Raj institutions in order to take democracy to the grassroots level. Though Panchayati Raj was created by the 73rd and the 74th Amendments to the Constitution in 1992, a year after Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, the background was prepared during the Congress government led by him.
Gandhi as prime minister announced National Policy on Education (NPE) in 1986 to modernise and expand higher education programmes across the country. With NPE in place, residential schools called Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas, under the central government, were set up to bring out the best of rural talent. These schools provide free residential education from grades six to twelve to the rural population.
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Lt. Col. Atul Chaudhary (V) I.A. |
