Three Param Vir Chakra awardees at Chandigarh Military Literature Festival

Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh will chair inaugural session; Darlymple, Vir Sanghvi among authors taking part at two-day fest from Friday.

Param Vir Chakra winners Capt Bana Singh 9(eft), Naib Subedar Sanjay Kumar (centre) and Subedar Yogender Yadav (right) will be attending sessions on both days of the Military Literature Festival in Chandigarh.

The only three living winners of the Param Vir Chakra (PVC), the country’s highest gallantry award, will be taking part in the two-day Military Literature Festival that starts with Punjab chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh chairing the inaugural session at the Sukhna Lake Club in Chandigarh on Friday.

PVC winners Capt Bana Singh, Naib Subedar Sanjay Kumar and Subedar Yogender Yadav will be attending sessions on both days of the festival. Capt Bana Singh was awarded the PVC for recapturing the highest Pakistani post on the Siachen Glacier, the Quaid Post, on June 26, 1987, that has since been named after him. Naib Subedar Sanjay Kumar and Subedar Yadav were awarded for their acts of gallantry during the Kargil war in 1999.

While Capt Amarinder will be chairing the hour-long panel discussion with veterans on the First Kashmir War, 1947-48, at 11.30am, there will be a parallel session on the Indian Navy of the future that Commodore C Uday Bhaskar (retd) and Admiral Arun Prakash (retd) will address.

Senior journalist Vir Sanghvi will be conducting an interactive session with military historians and authors, including Thomas Fraser and Tom Donovan.

After lunch, Punjab governor VP Singh Badnore will chair a discussion on Defensive Battles of Rajasthan, while there will be a parallel session on Indian Military and Society in which Lt Gen Vijay Oberoi, a former vice-chief of the army staff, will be taking part.

On December 9, author William Dalrymple will be taking part in a session on the Anglo-Sikh Wars. Former army chief General VP Malik will be holding a parallel session on military diplomacy, while yet another session on military writing in Punjabi will be held simultaneously.

Former Southern Command army commander Lt General Depinder Singh will be taking part on a discussion on the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka at 12.30pm.

Delhi University student activist Gurmehar Kaur will be taking part in a session on ‘The Latest Military Challenge – Social Media’. She is the daughter of Captain Mandeep Singh, who was killed after a Rashtriya Rifle camp was attacked by militants in Jammu and Kashmir on August 6, 1999.