As India remains soaked in revelry, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday morning reached Kargil to celebrate Diwali – the festival of lights – with soldiers.
Modi has been celebrating Diwali with security personnel since 2014 when he became the PM in the first term. In a tweet from his office, photos were shared soon after he landed in Kargil in Ladakh. “Prime Minister Shri @narendramodi has landed in Kargil, where he will celebrate Diwali with our brave soldiers. (sic)” it read.
His visit to Kargil comes a day after he was in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, for the Deepotsav celebrations where the temple town witnessed a new world record of 15 lakh diyas being lit on the banks of Saryu river. He also offered prayers to Ram Lalla (infant Ram) at the Janmabhoomi complex, and reviewed the progress of construction of Ram Temple.
Ahead of Diwali, PM Modi had a packed schedule with visits to his home state of Gujarat and also to Uttarakhand. In Uttarakhand, he inaugurated several developmental projects and also visited the iconic shrines of Kedarnath and Badrinath.
As prime minister, Modi first celebrated the festival of lights in Siachen in 2014. In 2015, he visited Punjab to mark 50 years of Indian Army’s achievements in the 1965 war with Pakistan. While in 2016, he went near the China border to spend the festival with the security personnel, he was in the Gurez Sector in North Kashmir in 2017.
In 2018, he was in Uttarakhand’s Harsil and the next year in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri. Last year, he was in Nowshera in J&K.
Meanwhile, it would be after two years that India would be celebrating Diwali without Covid curbs.