Prime Minister Narendra Modi was accorded a grand welcome by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers at HAL Airport, as he arrived from Greece directly to the City to meet the scientists at Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) following the success of Chandrayaan-3.
Though the party’s State unit had organised a road show of the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister’s Office reportedly shot down the proposal. However, nearly a thousand party workers had gathered outside the HAL Airport, waving tricolours, on Saturday morning.
Mr. Modi addressed the crowd and said, though he was in Johannesburg and Greece over the past two days, mentally he was with the scientists at ISRO. “I wanted to meet them and congratulate them. So I came to Bengaluru directly from Greece,” he said, before raising the slogan “Jai Vignan, Jai Anusandhan.”
Waiting by the roadside
He moved towards the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Peenya by road and a few metres before the facility, as more BJP workers including senior BJP leaders like state president Nalin Kumar Kateel, R. Ashok and several city BJP MLAs had gathered to greet him, he came out on the footboard of his car and waved at the supporters. He did not meet any BJP leaders during his visit. Congress spokesperson Ramesh Babu posted the photo of BJP leaders waiting by the roadside, saying thad such a “tragedy could happen only in a dictatorship”.
Earlier in the day, as Mr. Modi landed at HAL Airport, he was welcomed by Chief Secretary Vandita Sharma, DG&IGP Alok Mohan and City Police Commissioner B. Dayananda. Speaking to the gathered crowds later, Mr. Modi said he had requested the Chief Minister, Deputy Chief Minister and the State’s Governor to not take the trouble to wake up so early in the morning and to skip protocol. Mr. Modi landed in the city at 6:00 am.
Criticism over protocol
However, this move drew the ire of Congress. “He is apparently so irritated with the CM and Deputy CM of Karnataka for felicitating the scientists of ISRO before him, that he has purportedly barred the CM from receiving him at the airport, going against protocol. This is nothing but petulant petty politics,” senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh posted on social media X (formerly known as Twitter).
He also reminded the prime minister that he, as the chief minister of Gujarat, had visited the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad on October 22, 2008 just after the successful launch of the Chandrayaan-I at a time when Dr. Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister
