Location : Gujarat
Attractions : The Akshardham temple
Named After : Father of Nation
Gandhinagar is the capital of Gujarat
State, India. It is a planned city, like Chandigarh.
Gandhinagar is also the a district in the state of Gujarat.
Gandhinagar city falls under this district. This district is surrounded by Mehsana (NorthWest),
Sabarkanthaa (NorthEast), Ahmedabad
and Kheda (South) districts.
In 1960, the old Bombay state was split into
Maharashtra and Gujarat, with Ahmedabad
as the first capital of Gujarat. Gandhinagar was planned to be the new capital of Gujarat,
and the capital was moved there in 1970. It is named after Mahatma Gandhi, who was born in Gujarat.
Gandhinagar comprises thirty sectors. It is a highly-structured city and has a highly ordered
street grid - comprising blocks that are divided by two types of streets, similar to US avenues and
streets. Gandhinagar has "letter roads" (CH, CHH, JA) and "number roads" (1,2,3). The letter roads
run parallel across the city perpendicular to the number roads. The number and letter roads
intersect each other forming a grid; each block or square in the grid is given a sector number.
Each intersection is marked by signal names such as CH1, CH2, CH3 or JA1,JA2.
Terrorist attacks
The Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar
On September 26, 2002, two Muslim gunmen entered the Hindu Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar
and started firing indiscriminately at worshippers. After a 13-hour siege, National Security
Guard commandos gunned them down. Nearly a hundred Hindu devotees were left wounded and thirty
were killed, including eleven women and children. Letters found in the pockets of the attackers
revealed that they belonged to the Tehrik-a-Khasas ("Movement for Revenge").
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