Pakistan: Plan To Rename Lahore’s Shadman Chowk After Bhagat Singh 'Scrapped'

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A plan by Lahore’s city district government to rename Shadman’s Fawara Chowk as Bhagat Singh Chowk has been shelved following objections from a retired military officer, according to official documents submitted to the Lahore High Court (LHC), Dawn reports. The report, cited by Dawn, comes from the Metropolitan Corporation of Lahore, which details that the Dilkash Lahore Committee, on December 5, 2012, proposed renaming various roads, chowks, and underpasses in the city, including changing Fawara Chowk Shadman to Bhagat Singh Chowk. Following this decision, a government advertisement sought public feedback on the proposal.

However, some objections surfaced, leading the Bhagat Singh Memorial Foundation to file a writ petition in the LHC, asking to proceed with the renaming. In 2018, the court directed the government to address the foundation’s application in line with legal requirement, the report said. 

Documents now submitted to the court, as reported by Dawn, indicate that retired Commodore Tariq Majeed intervened, submitting an “awareness” brief to the government in response to the foundation’s petition. He dismissed Bhagat Singh’s legacy, describing him as a “criminal” rather than a freedom fighter.

Majeed argued that Singh’s image as a revolutionary is based on a “forged story” and asserted that Singh’s actions—specifically, his role in the killing of a British police officer—disqualify him as a freedom hero. According to Majeed, Bhagat Singh was “an enemy of Pakistan’s Islamic ideology” and had no role in the freedom struggle of the subcontinent.

The veteran also suggested that the Bhagat Singh Memorial Foundation is working against Pakistan’s ideology, urging the government to ban it for promoting “fake” propaganda. He argued that if the LHC had sought accurate historical details, the foundation’s petition would have been dismissed outright.

These remarks were attached to the official documents submitted to the LHC on Friday, in response to a contempt petition filed by the foundation’s chairman, Imtiaz Rasheed Qureshi. Qureshi seeks contempt proceedings against the Punjab chief secretary for not acting on the 2018 court directive to process the renaming request.

Justice Shams Mehmood Mirza has adjourned the hearing until January 17, 2025, due to the absence of the petitioner’s counsel. Meanwhile, the city district government, relying on the veteran’s statement, has requested the court to dismiss the contempt petition.

As per media reports initially cited by Dawn, then-District Coordination Officer Noorul Amin Mengal initially directed the city government in September 2012 to rename Shadman Chowk as Bhagat Singh Chowk, a decision that now remains mired in legal and ideological controversy.