PM Modi Recalls ‘Chacha Nehru’s Birthday’ in Chat With Students at Brisbane

BRISBANE: In Brisbane for a G20 meet, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today honoured Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, on his birth anniversary. “I am fortunate to be among children on Chacha Nehru’s birthday,” he told students who interacted with him at the Queensland University of Technology
The Prime Minister, dressed casually in a shirt and trousers, also posed for a selfie with the children, which was posted by his official website. Foreign ministry spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin posted another picture of children crowded around a message PM Modi had jotted down on the “Agro Robot”, a machine that functions like a tractor, on display in the university. “What’s he write? Curious children want to know what PM @narendramodi wrote on the ‘Agrobot’ (sic)?” he tweeted.
What PM Modi wrote was: “Research is the mother of development.”Earlier this morning, he tweeted his tribute to Jawaharlal Nehru.”Today we mark the 125th birth anniversary of our first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. My tributes to him. We remember Pandit Nehru’s efforts during the freedom struggle and his role as the first Prime Minister of India,” PM Modi posted.
Nehru’s birth anniversary has been dragged into a political battle for the legacy of icons that the Congress accuses PM Modi’s BJP of trying to appropriate.The Congress has not invited PM Modi for its two-day Nehru conference to which some 55 political parties and world leaders have been invited. Sonia Gandhi has written personally to leaders like Mamata Banerjee, Nitish Kumar and J Jayalalithaa, but no one from the BJP or its allies have been invited to the November 17 event.
“Nehru belongs to India and is India’s heritage,” Home Minister Rajnath Singh said today.Last month, a section of the Congress complained that the death anniversary of former prime minister Indira Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1984, was overshadowed by events organized by the government nationwide to draw attention to Sardar Patel’s birth anniversary the same day.
PM Modi is on a three-country, 10-day tour of Myanmar, Australia and Fiji. Reports suggest PM Modi wants the government to come up with ways of “connecting Nehru with the masses.” He had said last month that his “Swachh Bharat” or Clean India campaign would be taken to schools.