Khatkar Kalan (Punjab), March 14: When legendary freedom fighter Bhagat Singh laid down his life for the country's Independence, there was no way he could have known that people from his village would exercise freedom to settle abroad for greener pastures decades later. Half of the village's population of 400 families has migrated to foreign lands, leaving behind the elderly and caretakers. Most of them have migrated to the US, Canada, the UK and Europe.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Chief Minister-designate Bhagwant Mann, who sports a yellow turban for his reverence for Bhagat Singh to whom he calls his "only idol, only mentor and only hero", has chosen the freedom struggle icon's ancestral maternal village for his oath on Wednesday. Khatkar Kalan is a quaint historical self-contained village some 80 km from Chandigarh on the highway to Jalandhar in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar (earlier called Nawanshahr) district with the banking facility.

The village speaks about the valour of the famous patriots and freedom fighters like Sardar Kishan Singh, Sardar Ajit Singh, Sardar Swaran Singh and Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh. "They may kill me, they can crush my body, crush my spirit, but they cannot kill my ideas," reads the colorful graffiti on a village wall with a picture of Bhagat Singh, whose name reverberates at virtually every protest; recently during the year-long protest against the now repealed three farm laws.