PM Modi celebrates Diwali with jawans at Sir Creek Border with Pak

PM Narendra Modi celebrated Diwali with BSF, Army, Navy, and Air Force personnel in Gujarat's Kachchh.

Updated on: Oct 31, 2024, 14:46:27 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday spent Diwali with personnel from the BSF, Army, Navy, and Air Force at Lakki Nala in the Sir Creek area of Gujarat's Kachchh.

PM Modi at the Sir Creek border with Pakistan.

PM Narendra Modi visited the BSF outpost along the Pakistan border, interacting with soldiers and sharing Diwali greetings.

“This is an extremely inhospitable place, due to the very hot days and very cold nights. The terrain is also challenging,” an official source said.

This isn't PM Modi's first time celebrating Diwali with India's brave forces. In 2017, he spent the festive occasion with jawans in the Gurez Valley, near the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. On that occasion, he exchanged sweets, greeted the jawans, and addressed them, acknowledging their sacrifices and dedication to the nation.

Similarly, in another instance, PM Modi made a surprise visit to Siachen on Diwali in 2014, praising the valour and courage of the armed forces personnel. He emphasized that the jawans' unwavering commitment allows 125 crore Indians to celebrate Diwali and live their lives with comfort and security.

India, Chinese troops exchange Diwali sweets

Modi's Diwali celebrations with the BSF soldiers come even as troops of India and China exchanged sweets at several border points along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) on the occasion on Thursday.

The traditional practice was observed a day after both countries completed troop disengagement at the two friction points at Demchok and Depsang Plains in eastern Ladakh, bringing a fresh thaw in the Sino-Indian ties.

"Sweets exchange between members of the troops of India and China took place at several border points along the LAC on the occasion of Diwali," an Indian Army source told news agency PTI earlier in the day.

The move marks a collaborative spirit following the recent disengagement at two friction points in eastern Ladakh—Demchok and Depsang Plains. This disengagement, completed just a day prior, represents a hopeful step towards stabilizing Sino-Indian ties that have been strained since 2020.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More