President Droupadi Murmu graces opening of Rashtrapati Tapovan, Rashtrapati Niketan for public visit in Dehradun
Dehradun (Uttarakhand) [India], June 20 (ANI): President Droupadi Murmu on Friday graced the opening of Rashtrapati Tapovan and Rashtrapati Niketan at Dehradun. She also inaugurated public amenities, including the Visitor Facilitation Centre, the Cafeteria, and the Souvenir Shop, and laid the foundation stone for Rashtrapati Udyan at Rashtrapati Niketan.
President Murmu had also inaugurated an amphitheater at Rashtrapati Niketan yesterday.
Rashtrapati Tapovan, situated on Rajpur Road in Dehradun, is a 19-acre Presidential Estate nestled in the Himalayan foothills, emphasizing spiritual retreat and ecological preservation. A dense forest patch rich in native vegetation, Tapovan hosts 117 plant species, 52 butterflies, 41 bird species, and 7 wild mammals, including some protected species. The area features natural bamboo groves and undisturbed woodland ecosystems, President's Secretariat said.
Established in 1976 as a Presidential Retreat, Rashtrapati Niketan has a rich heritage tracing back to 1838 when the estate served as a summer camp for the Governor General's Bodyguard. It spans 21 acres and includes Lily ponds, featuring historic buildings, orchards, and stables.
Rashtrapati Udyan, a 132-acre public park, will be a model of accessibility and ecological responsibility -- a Net-Zero public park, fully accessible to Divyangjan. It aims to become a community engagement hub to promote wellness, culture, and civic pride among citizens.
A book on the biodiversity of Rashtrapati Niketan, Rashtrapati Tapovan and Rashtrapati Udyan was also released on the occasion. This book catalogues over 300 species of flora and 170 species of fauna, including butterflies, birds, and mammals of Rashtrapati Niketan, Tapovan and Udyan.
The Rashtrapati Tapovan and Rashtrapati Niketan will be open for public viewing from June 24 and July 1, 2025 respectively.
The President visited the National Institute for Empowerment of Persons with Visual Disabilities at Dehradun and interacted with the students. She also visited the Model School Science Lab and Computer Lab as well as an exhibition.
Speaking on the occasion, the President said that the progress of a country or society can be judged by the way the people treat persons with disabilities in that society. India's history is full of inspiring incidents of sensitivity and inclusiveness. Elements of human compassion and love have always been present in our culture and civilization. She stated that through the Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan, which emphasizes developing an accessible physical environment, transport, information, and communication ecosystem, the government is striving for empowerment and equal participation of the divyangjan.
The President said that today's era is the era of science and technology. With the help of advanced technology, even people with disabilities can be able to contribute to the mainstream. She was happy to note that the National Institute for the Empowerment of Persons with Visual Disabilities is giving special emphasis on the all-around development of students through an inclusive education system and latest technological resources. She said that efforts must be made by society to encourage disabled people in every sphere of life. (ANI)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Economic Times
an hour ago
- Economic Times
Indian defence delegation meets French officials in Paris; Rafale marine programme formally launched
ANI Indian defence delegation meets French officials in Paris; Rafale marine programme formally launched An Indian defence delegation led by Joint Secretary and Acquisition Manager (Maritime Systems) Dinesh Kumar met with French defence officials at the Paris Air Show on Thursday. The French side was headed by Lt Gen Gael Diaz De Tuesta, Director General of Armament. According to French defence officials, the meeting between the two sides also marked the formal launch of the Rafale marine programme, which already equips the Indian Air Force. Meanwhile, Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi on Thursday attended the 12th Key Leader Engagement, which was hosted virtually by US Navy's Pacific fleet Admiral Stephen T. Koehler. Admiral Tripathi highlighted his vision on "achieving maritime security in the Indo-Pacific through innovation and technology" in the Key Leader Engagement on Wednesday, which involved 19 nations. The Indian Navy, in a post on X, said, "Adm Dinesh K Tripathi, CNS, attended the 12th Key Leader Engagement hosted virtually by Adm Stephen T Koehler, @USPacificFleet, on Jun 25, involving 19 nations. CNS highlighted his vision on 'Achieving Maritime Security in the Indo-Pacific Through Innovation and Technology."Earlier, on June 13, Admiral Tripathi said that Operation Sindoor is on a pause, but it is an operation in progress. Speaking to ANI, Navy Chief Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi said, "Operation Sindoor is under pause; it is still underway. As a naval chief, I will reserve my comments on this. It's an operation in progress." He also commented on evolving warfare technology, particularly non-contact warfare and counter-drone systems, underscoring their growing importance. On counter-drone systems, he said that non-contact warfare will stay, and this area of weapons and equipment was not catered to 10-12 years ago. "It is undeniable that non-contact warfare is going to stay. In it, drones and loitering munitions, and therefore defence against them in terms of counter-drone systems, there is a whole series of weapons and equipment that one had probably not catered for 10-12 years ago," he said on Thursday. Reinforcing the focus on indigenous defence capabilities, Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi, accompanied by Chairman of Solar Industries India Limited, Satyanarayan Nuwal, reviewed the manufacturing processes of various defence products at the firm's headquarters in Nagpur. Speaking to ANI, the Navy Chief lauded the products and progress made by Solar Industries India Ltd. He added that there needs to be synergy between the public and private sectors, as the latter is new in defence production."It's really eye-opening to see what progress has been made by Solar (Solar Group) in the last 14-15 years. As far as the synergy between the public and private sectors in the defence ecosystem is concerned, it is a must because some public sector companies have been working in this field for many decades, and private companies are relatively new. So there is a need for them to talk to each other and learn from each other," Admiral Tripathi told of Solar Industries India Ltd, Satyanarayan Nuwal, said that they showed the Navy Chief their drones and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and also showed the Navy officials their Counter-Unmanned Aerial System, Bhargavastra. Talking to ANI, Satyanarayan Nuwal said, "Today, we mainly showed our facility with drones and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). We showed the composite manufacturing unit of UAS. We also showed Bhargavastra (Counter-Unmanned Aerial System) to them... This counter-drone system is a significant thing... Considering present situations, we learnt that the biggest need is for long-range missiles. We have already presented a proposal in this regard..." (ANI)
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
Indian defence delegation meets French officials in Paris; Rafale marine programme formally launched
An Indian defence delegation met with French officials at the Paris Air Show, formally launching the Rafale marine programme. Simultaneously, Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi attended a US Navy-hosted Key Leader Engagement, advocating for maritime security through innovation. He also reviewed indigenous defence manufacturing at Solar Industries, emphasizing public-private synergy and the growing importance of counter-drone systems. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads An Indian defence delegation led by Joint Secretary and Acquisition Manager (Maritime Systems) Dinesh Kumar met with French defence officials at the Paris Air Show on French side was headed by Lt Gen Gael Diaz De Tuesta, Director General of to French defence officials, the meeting between the two sides also marked the formal launch of the Rafale marine programme , which already equips the Indian Air Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi on Thursday attended the 12th Key Leader Engagement, which was hosted virtually by US Navy's Pacific fleet Admiral Stephen T. Tripathi highlighted his vision on "achieving maritime security in the Indo-Pacific through innovation and technology" in the Key Leader Engagement on Wednesday, which involved 19 Indian Navy , in a post on X, said, "Adm Dinesh K Tripathi, CNS, attended the 12th Key Leader Engagement hosted virtually by Adm Stephen T Koehler, @USPacificFleet, on Jun 25, involving 19 nations. CNS highlighted his vision on 'Achieving Maritime Security in the Indo-Pacific Through Innovation and Technology."Earlier, on June 13, Admiral Tripathi said that Operation Sindoor is on a pause, but it is an operation in to ANI, Navy Chief Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi said, "Operation Sindoor is under pause; it is still underway. As a naval chief, I will reserve my comments on this. It's an operation in progress."He also commented on evolving warfare technology, particularly non-contact warfare and counter-drone systems, underscoring their growing counter-drone systems, he said that non-contact warfare will stay, and this area of weapons and equipment was not catered to 10-12 years ago."It is undeniable that non-contact warfare is going to stay. In it, drones and loitering munitions, and therefore defence against them in terms of counter-drone systems, there is a whole series of weapons and equipment that one had probably not catered for 10-12 years ago," he said on the focus on indigenous defence capabilities, Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi, accompanied by Chairman of Solar Industries India Limited , Satyanarayan Nuwal, reviewed the manufacturing processes of various defence products at the firm's headquarters in to ANI, the Navy Chief lauded the products and progress made by Solar Industries India Ltd. He added that there needs to be synergy between the public and private sectors, as the latter is new in defence production."It's really eye-opening to see what progress has been made by Solar (Solar Group) in the last 14-15 years. As far as the synergy between the public and private sectors in the defence ecosystem is concerned, it is a must because some public sector companies have been working in this field for many decades, and private companies are relatively new. So there is a need for them to talk to each other and learn from each other," Admiral Tripathi told of Solar Industries India Ltd, Satyanarayan Nuwal, said that they showed the Navy Chief their drones and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and also showed the Navy officials their Counter-Unmanned Aerial System, to ANI, Satyanarayan Nuwal said, "Today, we mainly showed our facility with drones and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). We showed the composite manufacturing unit of UAS. We also showed Bhargavastra (Counter-Unmanned Aerial System) to them... This counter-drone system is a significant thing... Considering present situations, we learnt that the biggest need is for long-range missiles. We have already presented a proposal in this regard..." (ANI)
Hindustan Times
an hour ago
- Hindustan Times
Sam Dalrymple: 'The Northeast was probably the most affected by Partition'
This book is about the five partitions of the Indian Empire, which stretched from Aden in the west to Burma in the east to now 12 nations in three geographic regions. At the time, you write, even Britain downplayed its size. Nepal and Oman were never officially recognized. Arab states bordering the Ottoman Empire and Himalayan states near Tibet were left off the maps. But these were all run by the Indian political service, defended by the Indian army, their currency was the Indian rupee. So how did the British manage to hide them? And what did the Indian Empire actually look like? Sam Dalrymple, author, Shattered Lands (Courtesy HarperCollins) So, for example, a 1909 map [Political Divisions of the Indian Empire by The Indian Gazetteer] shows Burma as British India, and Nepal and Bhutan as princely states — they're in yellow exactly like Jaipur and Hyderabad are — but hides Arabia. A 1909 map of Aden by The Indian Gazetteer recognizes much of southern Yemen as dominated by princely states. A rare Indian Empire map from 1930 includes Aden but not the Gulf states. The British were always quite reticent to talk about what they were doing in the Arabian states, partially because very few people actually lived there. These were the poorest states in the Raj. Oil hadn't been discovered yet, and so, largely, it was small settlements on the coast. The Brits were only involving themselves in the cities and making sure that the sheikhs were abiding by them. The person who integrated the sheikhs of the Gulf into the Indian empire was Lord Curzon. Lord Curzon went on a Durbar trip to Sharjah [in 1903] and invited the sheikhs and gave them all gun salutes, and created a Persian Gulf residency, on the model of the Hyderabad residency or the Jaipur residency. So, subsequently you had the list of princely states beginning alphabetically with Abu Dhabi. There's a map of the Arabian peninsula in the Gazetteer issued to Indian civil servants, and if you placed it beside the India maps, it gave you a full picture of the size of the Indian Empire from Aden to Rangoon. The public never got to see its full scale though. The Ottoman Empire officially claimed the Arabian peninsula and the British wanted to avoid aggravating Constantinople, so they always kept the Arabian Raj off official maps of India. Likewise, Britain's presence in Nepal and Bhutan — they didn't want to scare China or Tibet. But officially under the Interpretation Act of 1889, these were India. And everyone was eligible for an Indian passport... At the Round Table Conference on Burma in 1931, Burmese leaders were against separation from India. In Aden at the same time, some saw 'the connection with India as organic.' The city's many Gujarati and Parsi residents thought Aden 'was an integral part of the Indian nation'. In the 1940s, the Nawab of Bhopal wanted the princely states to, instead of acceding to India or Pakistan, be unified as a third dominion called 'Rajastan'. The Nagas wanted a separate Christian state under the Commonwealth nation. Kalat [in present-day Balochistan], then the third largest princely state in the Raj, wanted to be independent. What were, at the time, considered the most plausible partitions? I think what's remarkable is how late the idea of independence comes up. It took them until 1929 to ask for it. What they'd all been asking for until then is for the interconnectivity of the empire to remain but for equal opportunity within the empire. The model was the Roman Empire, which, around 200 AD, became completely racially equal — so Philip the Arab could become the Roman emperor and then you've got people from Tunisia or Egypt or Syria or France suddenly ruling the Roman Empire. So, for early nationalists, it would have included everything from Aden to Burma as one giant country probably governed along a system like the United States of America, which was another country that had gained independence from Britain in the past. Once it became clear that independence was happening, you had hundreds of different ideas of what different states could look like and virtually no one could have imagined what we actually got. Gandhi wanted independence for basically Bharatvarsha. He wanted to carve out a nation state that resembled Bharat of Mahabharata fame. We're so used to this idea of undivided India that we forget until as late as the 1920s, it had never been attempted before to have all of it ruled on one country. Even Ashoka and the Mughals had never ruled over the whole of the subcontinent. There had always been a bit of Tamil Nadu or a bit of Kerala that had been independent. Or it had included Afghanistan as well or something. There were various other ideas of kind of uniting all the Muslim areas. There were ideas of Burmese nationalists. There was a very early idea of a Dravidian state that has Hindustan and India as two separate bits. The idea that we grow up with in Delhi schools is the idea that Gandhi had of this eternal Bharat. The fact that there were hundreds of other visions or just near misses is forgotten. 536pp, ₹799; HarperCollins Did Gandhi set the tone for what India now looks like? It wasn't him specifically. The idea that set it up was in the wake of the 1905 Partition of Bengal. You suddenly had nationalists producing images of Bharat Mata, and the Congress latched on to it. But the depiction of independent India as Bharat Mata alienated the Burmese and the Arabs. These partitions occurred within the last hundred years and still exist in living memory. The 'Long March' of about 600,000 Indian refugees from Burma, 80,000 of whom die... How well are these stories documented — and were they hard to access? The origin story of this book was from a conversation with someone in Tripura who I was asking about Partition for our Project Dastaan [an initiative co-founded by Dalrymple in 2018 to reconnect people displaced by Partition]. And they said 'Which partition? ... Because there was the 1937 one from Burma, 1947 from India. And then Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971 and we got another influx for refugees.' And I, having studied Partition for three years, had never considered that. Each of these 12 countries has brushed over its past. Unlike Partition where lots of people are still alive, the 'Long March' was six years earlier so we've lost six more years and it's very late to get these stories out. I've only got a couple of people who I was able to interview in person. A Sikh family from north London — of the character Uttam Singh from the book, his grandkids — had reached out to me on Instagram and said they had a Partition story. I told them about what I was doing with the book and they said 'Oh, we were in Punjab for Partition, but actually before 1941 we were all in Burma.' And then they opened this trunk and they had an untranslated diary, photographs, and everything. I think that the key one though is Yemen — it lost most of its papers in the communist takeover of South Yemen. Many of the archives there were burnt. And all of these Arab states have been very harsh with their citizenship laws — about who gets to be Kuwaiti or from Dubai... and they don't particularly want to run over this history, especially in the present day. But the big story there got discovered by professor James Onley, who was the director of research at the Qatar National Library. He was commissioned by the sheikh of Qatar, who wanted to create a Qatari digital library, to find documents relating to Qatari history. And there was nothing in Qatar on what its life was before the 1950s and '60s. He eventually stumbled upon the fact that everything is sitting in the Bombay archives. It's not in London, it's not in Qatar, it's all in Bombay. He wrote a big book that's a classic called The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj (2007). You've used a lot of personal correspondences and diaries for your research — starting from letters written by John Simon [of the Simon Commission] to his mother describing his travels, or the ones between Sarojini Naidu and her daughter Padmaja, Asha Sahay who was a foot soldier of the INA, Uttam Singh... Tell me more about finding private papers and working with such personal research material. There were some particularly interesting ones. Two of the wildest interviews and private papers I had was Ghalib Al-Qu'aiti, the Yemeni Sultan, who's descended from the Nizam of Hyderabad. I ended up meeting him and he's living stateless in Jeddah; he's not allowed to leave the country and the Brits are refusing to give him a passport. He'd attempted to write his own autobiography but never got it published... he had all these letters and private papers that no one's really ever used before. The other one was Feroz Khan Noon, the seventh prime minister of Pakistan, who was removed when martial law was first imposed in 1957. His family live in Lahore and the family archives just haven't been utilized. And then the other one was actually my godmother Brigid Keenan who, as a young girl saw the last Brits disappearing through the Gateway of India and whose father was in the PBF, the Punjab Boundary Force. He was an Irishman who is one of the few people who volunteers to try and keep the peace... and I found his letters, which were just sitting in a house in Somerset. What was your most surprising discovery? That the Persian Gulf remained a part of the Indian Empire till 1947. That one muddled me. And it was weirdly difficult to find any papers on — so much of it is online, but it's difficult to find anyone talking about it. The thing that we've got to remember is that the Gulf was the lowest ranking princely states in the Indian empire. Not even worthy of one gun salute, you write. They weren't invited! The Sultan of Oman is the exception, and Qu'aiti State, the guys in Eastern Yemen. Oman had 21 [gun salutes] Qu'aiti State had 10, and Dubai and Abu Dhabi had zero. They all were invited to go to Mayo College, etcetera as princes. I think that's going be the big surprise for Indian readers – the fact that there was a world where the united oil wealth of the entire Gulf could have gone to either India, or let's not forget, Pakistan. These were Muslim-majority states, they could have joined Pakistan instead and probably would have. Many cities, thriving centres of culture and trade, suffered tragic declines in this time. What were some of the biggest casualties? I don't think we should be nostalgic about the 1930s. Each of these countries has gained things and lost things. This was a time of high imperialism and very racially segmented societies that worked on the basis of exclusion. One of the places that's changed the most and suffered the most in this time would probably be Hyderabad, which was this centre of courtly wonder and baroque palaces. So much has been lost, so many great libraries, collections of art — Hyderabad should be the number one tourist destination in the country and would have been in the 1930s. Jaipur and Jodhpur and Udaipur and all the places we visit today were nothing compared to Hyderabad. Half of it was bulldozed, destroyed and ghettoized in the wake of the events of the 1940s. But I feel like it's a complicated legacy. This was also a place of great brutality, probably the most socially hierarchical place in the entire subcontinent with bonded labour ruining the lives of most the population. Today, through the lens of modern politics, we often look at it as a Hindu-Muslim thing with the Nizam as a Muslim, but I think if we look at it through the lens of class, we see that this was the site of, in the 1950s, South Asia's biggest communist movement and communist revolution. The Indian Army was still fighting communists in the Telangana countryside three years after it went into the place. Burma lost something immense. It was the most multicultural region in Asia, and today it's driven by ethnic factionalism, mass murder and civil war. But at the same time, Rangoon in the 1930s was also not necessarily a completely open place. It was driven heavily by class and race. Aden was a very diverse cosmopolitan place filled with traders from across the Indian ocean. It was one-third Indian, one-third Somali, one-third Arab, about ten percent Jews. Like Rangoon, it is the one that's fallen the most from one of the great ports of the world to a southern Yemeni city that's now riven by ethnic and religious civil war. The culture of Lahore is mourned immensely. But there were quite justifiable reasons many Muslims felt like they needed separation. Urvashi Butalia and Aanchal Malhotra have both talked a lot about this. People in Lahore who lived through Partition, who miss their friends, but also will tell you about how Hindus were never able to eat in the same room as their Muslim best friends. You write about the alliance between India and Pakistan after Partition. How did it come about and what went wrong? Of the two books that really discovered this, one is Pallavi Raghavan's Animosity at Bay (2019), which is an alternative history of the relationship of India and Pakistan. After the ceasefire in 1949 over Kashmir, both countries were quite happy to leave it to the UN and move on creating a new future, particularly in the wake of the Liaquat–Nehru Pact. And so Jinnah's tomb was built by an Indian Muslim. His daughter lived in Bombay her whole life without much issue. There were whole communities with half a family living on one side and the other half on the other side of the border. The other book is Avinash Paliwal's who was the first to used declassified intelligence files from the Northeast, and he's completely rewritten everything that we thought — because until that point, we'd been relying on memoirs and oral histories and news reports, often which got things wrong. Bizarrely, the thing that breaks apart the India-Pakistan relationship is India sending the army into Goa [in 1961] to annex it from the Portuguese. And that whilst everyone in India and half the world saw this as a final moment of decolonization, the Pakistani leadership, which had a year earlier put a military pact with India on the table, saw it as India suddenly muscling up its army, taking on European powers militarily, and essentially as a new Indian expansionism — that India would have this irredentist thing of trying to claim back lost territory. So the Pakistani leadership was terrified and started funding Naga separatists the same year. Within a year, India started funding the Pashtuns and Bengali separatists. And it became a tit for tat. But from 1949 to 1960, the whole of the 1950s, there was another way, many what-ifs that could have happened. And I think that more research really needs to be done to figure out the details of what went wrong. The 1965 war is actually the one that broke down the complete relationship: enemy property acts come in, all transport across the borders stopped, the beginning of a border wall is built up. How was the Northeast affected by Partition? The Northeast was probably the most affected by Partition. It's the reason that the Northeast is now a strange appendage on the right of India. Tripura was 20 kms from Chittagong, South Asia's largest port, and suddenly became landlocked by 2,000 kms in an area with no roads. The economy completely crumbled, and the indigenous population was overwhelmed by Bengalis flooding into the country. Half of the conflict, with the exception of Arunachal Pradesh, all of the others — the AFSPA agitation, the insurgencies in Tripura, Mizoram and Nagaland — have roots in Partition. Many of the ethnic conflicts in the Northeast — when you grow up in Delhi, at least — seemed so complicated. But the moment you think about how everything has to do with borders cutting through communities, and with regions being overwhelmed by new migrants, suddenly all of its politics became clear overnight. That fog lifted. Saudamini Jain is an independent journalist. She lives in New Delhi.
