Itanagar, Oct 27 : The postponement of the Dalai Lama’s visit to Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh has dismayed the people of the Buddhist centre on the Sino-India border.
The Dalai Lama was scheduled to inaugurate a hospital early next month but his office had verbally communicated that the visit has been postponed to March due to his ill health, Tsewang Dhondup, Tawang Congress MLA, told PTI.
The Tibetan temporal head’s secretary and spokesman Tenzin Takhla had said in Delhi yesterday that the week-long visit to Tawang, Bomdilla and Itanagar had been postponed due to ‘logistical problem’.
The Dalai Lama touched by the poor medical infrastructure of the mountainous region had given Rs 20 lakh for the hospital during his visit here in 2004.
Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu and BJP MP Kiren Rijiju, both Buddhist and residents of Tawang, had contributed Rs 90 lakh and Rs 20 lakh respectively for the hospital project and the State Government provided Rs 1 crore.
The hospital will have tele-medicine, modern eye surgery facilities.
Dhondup, who is looking after the construction of the hospital, told PTI that the Dalai Lama had given his consent to inaugurate the hospital when Khandu accompanied by other Ministers met him at Dharamsala last year.
He said he would go to Delhi soon to find out if the spiritual leader would be able to undertake the visit in March as people are eagerly waiting for him.
“We may look for some other person for the inauguration if we feel the chances of the Dalai Lama’s visit here in March is bleak,” he said.
Dalai Lama’s proposed visit to Tawang assumes significance since the rejection by India over the claim of China on the land of Monpas and birth place of the 6th Dalai Lama.
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