Kanyakumari: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressing a BJP rally in Tamil Nadu’s Kanyakumari town, said every Indian is proud that brave Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman is from Tamil Nadu, following it up with the statement that he is proud that India’s first woman defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman is also from Tamil Nadu.
This was the first time that the Prime Minister directly spoke about the IAF pilot who has been in Pakistani custody for the last two days.
The Prime Minister, who was present at a science award function said, “You are folks who spend your lives in a laboratory, and are used to conducting pilot projects. A pilot project is followed by scalability. Now a pilot project has been completed. Now we have to make it real. Earlier it was just a practice session”.
The PM had made a cryptic reference to the IAF pilot on Thursday after his Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan made the announcement about his release. In an apparent reference to India’s air strikes on terror camps in Pakistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday had said that a “pilot project”, which was a “practice” just got over, and the “real project” was yet to happen. “You are the people who spend life in laboratories. You have a tradition of first doing a pilot project. Later it is scaled up. So recently a pilot project was over. Now the real one has to be done. Earlier one was a practice,” Modi had said as the audience burst into wild applause.
Watch: IAF Pilot Abhinandan’s parents cheered on board flight to Delhi as they wait for son’s return
