President, Vice-President, PM pay tribute to Vajpayee on birth anniversary
New Delhi: President Ram Nath Kovind, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi were among the dignitaries who paid rich tribute to former prime minister and BJP stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee on his birth anniversary.
President Kovind paid homage to Vajpayee at 'Sadaiv Atal', a memorial to the former prime minister, here, the Rashtrapati Bhavan stated in a tweet.
Besides Kovind and Modi, top Union ministers also attended a prayer meeting at the memorial and paid homage to the first prime minister from the saffron party.
Vajpayee's visionary leadership saw the country's development reach unprecedented heights, Modi said in a tweet. "His efforts for making a strong and prosperous India will be remembered forever," he said.
Naidu shared several poems penned by Vajpayee to remember him fondly and lauded him as a "great visionary" and the "man of masses ".
"Atal Ji was a leader par excellence who was respected across party lines. He was an exceptional orator, a distinguished scholar and a gifted poet, but above all, he was a large-hearted human being who cared deeply for the country and its welfare," he said.
Home Minister Amit Shah said Vajpayee's ideas and dedication to the country's development will always inspire them to serve the country. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and BJP president J P Nadda were among other key leaders who paid homage to him.
Born in 1924, Vajpayee was a founder member of the Jana Sangh and then the BJP, a party which rose from the margins to rule India for the first time in 1990s with him being its main face. His tenure is credited with ushering in a fresh wave of liberalisation, boosting growth and infrastructure.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
