Observance of martyrdom day at PU

Chandigarh: Four day events starting from January 27, 2020 to observe 150th Birth Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi   and 550th Birth Anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev Ji by Department of Gandhian & Peace Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh, culminated with observance of Martyrdom Day on 30th January, 2020. 
    The day started with the Sarva Dharma Prayers & Bhajans by Shri Surender Kumar and a special Lecture by Green Man of Ludhiana, Shri Rohit Mehra on “Habits of Success: Living Green” at Gandhi Bhawan. Mr. Mehra while narrating the different incidents that how he started with the idea of ‘Green approach’ when few years ago the schools were shut down because of the environment and too much pollution and according to him Environment plays a very crucial role in making our lives comfortable as well as uncomfortable when we try to play with the nature. The way is to correct our approach towards seeing the environment. At present the pollution is just like gas chambers where when we put more comforts for ourselves, we create more problems for the society especially for the coming generations. 
    He further added that many of the Indian cities are most polluted when we see the ranking interms with the world cities, the only reason that Indian cities are more into because we are not sensitive and we don’t care for our future generations. Whereas because of the problems we have started facing, the scenario started changing. Through his practical approach, he was able to change the Air Quality Index only with few changes around him, and that is by planting more trees which produces more oxygen and when they checked the AQI it reduces to 78 from 274 and the internal temperature also reduces to 5-7 degrees.
    Prof. Shankarji Jha, Dean of University Instructions and officiating Vice Chancellor, Panjab University asked the students to correlate themselves with the ideology of the Mahatma and how we put ourselves into other position, only then we will be able to understand their difficulties.
    Prof. Emanual Nahar, Dean Student Welfare, stressed that the non-violent way is the best solution for the humanity to safeguard ourselves and the problems like poverty, disparity, violence can be reduced when we follow the Gandhian path by paying more attention on values, soul force, sacrifice, morality and ethics.
    Earlier, Dr. Manish Sharma while paying tribute to the Martyrs, stressed on how the department under his guidance was imbibing the environment friendly ideas of Gandhi by planting saplings on the birthdays of faculty, staff and students and taking other sustainable measures.
    The prizes of the on the spot painting competition were declared and also given to the winners on the ocassion. Yash Rathaur, Dishant Bansal, Vedant Kaushi, Aastha and Ananjay won the prize in the 1st Category of age group 4-8 years. Aanya Goel, Ayush, Vidushi, Eshanni, Bhanupriya, Hemanshi and Aanandita won the prize in 2nd Category of 8-14 years and Ajeetpal Singh, Sanjeev Kumar, Vishal, Navpreet Singh, Khushi, Disha Thapp, Vivek Kumar, Shivani Gulati, Sunil Angal and Pratibha shyam won the prize in the 3rd Category of 14 to 26 years. /(Jan 31)