Common man tells Lucknow how to treat the national flag

LUCKNOW - A 52-year-old activist has taken up a unique task - picking up all the national flags discarded on the streets of Lucknow after the official Independence Day functions.

For Mewa Lal, a resident of the city’s Jankipuram locality, the exercise is not new.

“I have been doing this quietely for the past two decades,” he told IANS Sunday, while clearing one of the main city thoroughfares.

With a bag in one hand, he was busy lifting scores of tiny flags littered along the main road in Hazratganj.

“I will bury these with all the respect and honour that is mandatory to be given to the tricolour,” Lal pointed out.

Lal, who is involved with a solid waste management project in the capital, is so passionate about ensuring due respect to the tricolour that sometime back he literally reprimanded a minister for displaying the flag on his official vehicle at night.

“It is a pity that most people entitled to the national flag remain clueless about its basic treatment. Most of the people do not care to remove the flag at sunset, which is again explicitly laid down,” he said.

“In fact, the lowering or removal of a national flag has to be synchronised with sunset,” he added.

Yet another cause of worry for him is the proliferation of flags made out of polythene and synthetic material - which are not bio-degradable.

“While flags were traditionally made out of cloth or paper, the new trend is to make polythene ones, which pose a serious problem of disposal,” he pointed out.

Yet, since he has no option for the time being, he plans to carry out a mass burial in an open ground once again this time.