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PM has been celebrating Diwali with security personnel since 2014: A throwback
PM Modi would be marking Diwali with security personnel after visit to UP, Uttarakhand and Gujarat in the past few days.
Following days of packed schedule ahead of Diwali, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to celebrate the festival of lights with soldiers at the border like every year. This comes a day after he was in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, where he offered prayers to Ram Lalla (the infant Ram) at the Ram Janmabhoomi complex. He also reviewed progress of the ongoing construction of the Ram Temple. In PM Modi’s presence, the temple town of Ayodhya also set a new world record as 15 lakh diyas were lit on the banks of Saryu river.
In the last few days, he has also visited Uttarakhand and his home state of Gujarat.
Meanwhile, the prime minister has been celebrating Diwali with soldiers every year since 2014 when he marked the festival with security forces in Siachen. “From the icy heights of the Siachen Glacier & with the brave Jawans & Officers of the Armed Forces, I wish all of you a Happy Diwali,” he had tweeted at the time.
The next year, he visited three memorials in Punjab to honour successes of the Indian Army in the 1965 war. This was on the 50th anniversary of the 1965 war, and the Prime Minister said he had "chosen to visit locations where the brave soldiers of the Indian Armed Forces had shed blood and made the supreme sacrifice during that war". The battles of Dograi and Barki were the key successes during the 1965 war.
In 2016, he went to Himachal Pradesh to meet soldiers near the China border. He held interactions with men from the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), the Dogra Scouts and the army at Sumdoh; and made an unplanned stop at a village, Chango, where he said he was “deeply touched by the impromptu reception and their joy”. 2017 was when he went to the Gurez sector in North Kashmir and asserted that "spending time with our forces gives me new energy".
The next year, PM Modi spent Diwali in Uttarakhand’s Harsil where he paid a surprise visit to troops. This was followed by a visit to the iconic Kedarnath Dham. This year, he has already visited the highly revered site among Hindus.
While 2019 was when he met the personnel in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri, in 2020, he was at the border post of Longewala. Diwali is complete, he was quoted as saying in a statement, only when he is with the soldiers whether in the snow-clad mountains or in the desert.
Last year, he celebrated the festival of lights in Jammu and Kashmir’s Nowshera. “I feel privileged that I got to spend Diwali with our brave soldiers in Nowshera, not as Prime Minister but as a member of their family,” he had tweeted at the time along with some photographs of the interaction.
