The Hindu : National : ‘Vandemataram was Verma’s dream project’

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Sunday, Jul 01, 2007
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‘Vandemataram was Verma’s dream project’

Sunny Sebastian

— Photo: Shanker Chakravarty

Tragic scene: The father of Sahib Singh Verma waits for the body of his son, who died in a road accident at Shahjahanpur in Rajasthan on Saturday.

JAIPUR: BJP leader Sahib Singh Verma, who was killed in a car accident on Saturday, is the second former Union Minister to meet with a tragic end on the perilous roads of Rajasthan within a span of seven years. Senior Congress leader and former Minister Rajesh Pilot died in a road accident in June 2000 when the car he was driving collided with a Rajasthan Roadways bus near Bandarage on National Highway 11 on the Jaipur-Dausa stretch.

According to Alwar Superintendent of Police Biju George Joseph, who reached the site soon after the accident, Mr. Verma died on the spot. Doctors at the Shajahanpur PHC pronounced him “brought dead.”

A post-mortem was conducted on Mr. Verma’s body after his wife arrived from Delhi in the evening. BJP president Rajnath Singh, Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and party spokesperson Prakash Javadekar reached the spot by helicopter. Later, the body was taken to Delhi. On receiving the news about Mr. Verma demise, the BJP State unit cut short a meeting of its Minority Morcha, attended by the former Minister Shahanawaz Hussain.

Mr. Verma, who had of late grown fond of the Shekhawati region in the State, spent Friday night in the premises of Vandemataram — a village reconstruction project taken up by him a few months ago — after arriving from Delhi. In fact, Mr. Verma was growing popular among the Jats of Shekhawati.

On Saturday morning, he inaugurated a girl’s college in Kotada village, about 15 km from the Vandemataram project. “We were together till 11.40 a.m. when he left for Delhi and I continued the tour of my Lok Sabha constituency,” BJP MP from Sikar, Subhash Maharia, told .

“Vandemataram was his dream project. It meant the uplift of rural people, women and children through awareness and education,” he said. “If we can recognise the hidden talent in children of rural households and help them to nourish it through education that will be the biggest service we can provide to the people,” he quoted Mr. Verma as saying in his last public address at the function. Mr. Verma had plans to develop Vandemataram into a university, providing holistic education to the children of the region, especially those belonging to the Shekhawati region. “We will strive to make his dream a reality,” Mr. Maharia said.

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