India’s visually impaired women’s cricket team, which won the T20 World Cup cricket for the Blind, was felicitated at the event
Twenty-two years ago, industrialist politician Naveen Jindal won a court battle that allowed every Indian the right to fly the Tiranga. But with millions of flags now in use and with polyester added to the permissible fabric, comes the question of respectful disposal of the worn-out flags. That’s where the Flag Foundation of India’s (FFOI) effort to recycle the flag comes in.
On Saturday afternoon, at Jindal House in Delhi, a heartwarming function was held to mark the anniversary of the Supreme Court judgment that democratised the use of the Indian National flag and also to felicitate India’s visually impaired women’s cricket team that won the T20 World Cup cricket for the Blind recently. As guests left the delightful luncheon where top cops, lawyers, politicians, former generals and academicians mingled and shared nostalgic stories of the landmark case, everyone was gifted a recycled flag.
“Now that the common public has got the right to fly flags and the usage has been expanded beyond khadi, cotton and silk to include polyester, the question arises — how do you dispose it? That’s why we said, let us start a drive to recycle the flags,” says Maj General Ashim Kohli, CEO of FFOI, describing how the foundation reached out to IIT Delhi to come up with a technology to do so.
Interestingly, Kohli, with his daughter, runs an NGO – Sewaj Niseem Foundation — that has a ‘Vardi ka Samman’ initiative to gracefully dispose of uniforms used by personnel of the three forces. “With the approval of the army headquarters, we started this movement,” says Kohli, describing how over 35,000 to 40,000 uniforms have been collected and repurposed. This year, they plan to scale up the initiative.
Meanwhile, the Jindals — Naveen and Shallu — who are president and vice president of FFOI, are keeping the momentum around ‘har ghar tiranga’ going with awareness campaigns. FFOI is seeking recognition of January 23 as National Flag Day, and Shallu Jindal describes how there is an idea to create a flag museum. After all, the Jindals are sitting on some marvellous treasures around the Tiranga, such as a lot of original commissioned audio tributes from composers like Vanraj Bhatia and singers like Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghoshal. “The album was called ‘Tiranga Mera Aanchal’, and I would love to relaunch it,” she says.
Ask Naveen Jindal how one can make the Indian flag fly higher and without missing a beat, he responds, “It is every citizen’s responsibility – so if everyone does their job better, keeping the country’s interests at heart, the flag will fly higher.”
Published on January 25, 2026