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Controversy over Kundara Vilambaram Memorial settled

Staff Reporter

Memorial to be at Elampallur, Dalawa cultural centre at Nanthrikkal

END TO CONTROVERSY: The incomplete Kundara Vilambaram Memorial at Elampallur

KOLLAM: The controversy over the location of a memorial for Velu Thampi Dalawa at Kundara has been settled.

Culture Minister M.A. Baby told presspersons here on Saturday that the Kundara Vilambaram Memorial would be set up at Elampallur in Kundara. Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee would lay the foundation stone for the Velu Thampi Dalawa Cultural Complex at Nanthrikkal in Kundara.

Elampallur was the location from where Velu Thampi Dalawa made the declaration 187 years ago to fight and chase away the British and liberate Travancore. That declaration came to be known as the Kundara Vilambaram.

A memorial for the Kundara Vilambaram has been promised by successive Governments. In stages, a structure started coming up at Elampallur but it remained incomplete. The structure was not built with any fund allocation from the Government.

Though considered a part of Kundara, Elampallur is today under the Eravipuram Assembly Constituency. Mr. Baby got elected to the Assembly from the Kundara Constituency. Thus when the Cultural Department announced the laying of a foundation stone for the Velu Thampi Dalawa Cultural Complex at Nanthrikkal, which comes under the Kundara Constituency, it stirred a hornet's nest.

Votaries of the Vilambara Memorial camp at Elampallur cried foul. They alleged that the Nanthrikkal complex is coming up at the cost of the Vilambaram Memorial. They even went to extent of alleging that Mr. Baby had vested interests in constructing the cultural complex in memory of Velu Thampi at Nanthrikkal and that with the complex coming up at Nanthrikkal, the memorial at Elampallur will never be realised. The campaign clicked and it triggered statements and speeches from various sections condemning the "Government move to shift the location of the memorial for Velu Thampi Dalawa." The issue even got politicised.

It was this row which Mr. Baby settled on Saturday. He announced that not only would the "historical Kundara Vilambaram Memorial come up at Elampallur, the Government has made an allocation of Rs.1 lakh for the purpose."

He also said that another allocation of Rs.2 lakh would also be made for the Elampallur memorial.

While the one at Nanthrikkal would be a cultural complex in Dalawa's memory, the one at Elampallur would be the Vilambaram Memorial. The former would function as a museum.

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