Sardar Patel's tallest statue tribute to farmers: Modi
Davanagere: With an eye on the upcoming assembly election in Karnataka, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the world's tallest statue of Sardar Vallabhai Patel in Gujarat will be a tribute to the sweat and toil of millions of Indian farmers.
"The Sardar Vallabhai Patel's statue (182m high), known as the Statue of Unity, being built on the river Narmada near Vadodara in Gujarat, is double the size of Statue of Liberty (93m) in New York," Modi said addressing a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rally in this textile town, about 260km northwest of Bengaluru.
Modi also urged the farmers across the state to donate handful of rice to Yeddyurappa, in a similar way as collection of metal pieces for the tallest statue. "I request all farmers in the state to donate a handful of rice, to contribute to the development of a new Karnataka, to Yeddyurappa during his tour across the state in March," he said.
The Prime Minister draped a green shawl, a symbol and common dress-code of the farming community in the state, during his 30-minute address.
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Indigo flights chaos: SCR to run special trains to clear passenger rush
Hyderabad (PTI): The South Central Railway on Saturday announced that it would run four special trains to manage the surge in passengers resulting from the large-scale cancellation of IndiGo flights here.
The move comes as flyers face significant disruption and long queues at the airport due to the cancellation.
A press release from the SCR said it is running the special trains to clear the extra rush of passengers to Chennai, Mumbai and Shalimar (Kolkata) from Hyderabad today.
Meanwhile, as many as 43 outbound Indigo flights were cancelled from here on Saturday, Rajiv Gandhi International Airport sources said.
Similarly, 26 incoming flights are also likely to be cancelled during the day, they said.
The flight cancellations drew ire from passengers, who thronged the IndiGo counters at the airport demanding to know the exact situation.
“This is utter nonsense! Digiyatra done, message received that departure has been rescheduled ahead of the scheduled departure and now upon arriving at Hyderabad airport coming to know at the security checkpoint that Indigo flight is cancelled,” Tarun Singha, former Ministry of Defence spokesperson said in a post on X.
“But the thing is if you don’t shout they do nothing. Example at Hyderabad Airport, there was no staff no flight information for an hour. Then a fellow passenger started shouting on mic and an Indigo staff appeared finally,” a netizen said in a post.
On Friday, when IndiGo cancelled over 1,000 flights from across airports, its CEO Pieter Elbers apologised in a video message for the major inconvenience caused to passengers due to the disruptions.
In the one-way video communication, Elbers also said that the airline was expecting fewer than 1,000 flights on Saturday.
