Mumbai: The Maharashtra government will inaugurate a tourism circuit dedicated to the Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, famous as Swatantryaveer Savarkar on February 26, marking his 57th death anniversary, officials said here on Saturday.
The Savarkar Circuit will comprise of five significant places linked with Savarkar in the state and will be launched at a grand event on Sunday at his birth place Bhagur in Nashik, Tourism Minister Mangal Prabhat Lodha said.
The circuit will take the tourists to Bhagur, the memorial of his brother Ganesh Savarkar in Sangli, his hostel room in Fergusson College in Pune, the Ratnagiri Jail where he was once lodged and the Patit Pawan Temple he built there, and the Savarkar National Memorial in Mumbai.
The announcement came barely days after the ruling alliance Shiv Sena’s Chief and Chief Minister Eknath Shinde announced that his party would demand the Centre to confer the Bharat Ratna posthumously on Swatantryaveer Savarkar.
The government will also develop a Savarkar theme park with a memorial and a museum in one year, and collaborate with tour operators to add the Savarkar circuit in their tour packages, Lodha said.
The archaeological state has already started a revamp of Savarkar’s birthplace, Savarkarwada in Nashik, and will create all tourism related infrastructure and facilities on the circuit.
In recent times, Savarkar has been targeted for his mercy petition to the British government seeking release from the Cellular Jail in Andaman & Nicobar Islands, besides his alleged involvement in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
During the Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY) march in Maharashtra in November 2022, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi had taken potshots at Savarkar which almost created a rift in the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance here.
Lodha said that from February 28, the government will start a sound-and-laser light show at the Gateway of India in Mumbai to commemorate the departure of the last of the British troops after Independence, from here.
He said initially the show will be on weekends and later it would be a daily affair for domestic and international tourists who throng the Gateway of India.
Earlier, on November 26, 2022 – on the occasion of the Constitution Day – the state government had launched an Ambedkar circuit in the state in memory of B. R. Ambedkar, the Chief Architect of the Indian Constitution, covering historical places linked with him in Mumbai, Konkan, Pune, Nashik, Aurangabad and Nagpur.
–IANS