Modi pays homage to Tilak on his 103rd death anniversary, to be conferred with Lokmanya Tilak National Award

The design of some of the Metro stations on the route draws inspiration from Maratha warrior Chhatrapati Shivaji.

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday paid homage to Lokmanya Tilak on his 103rd death anniversary.  “I pay homage to Lokmanya Tilak on his Punya Tithi,” read a post on PM Modi’s official Twitter handle.

Prime Minister Modi will be visiting Pune on Tuesday during which he will lay the foundation stone for various development projects, stated an official release from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on Sunday.

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Further, as per the statement, he will be conferred with the Lokmanya Tilak National Award at an event where he will share the stage with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar.

Taking to Twitter, PM Modi said that he was humbled to have been picked for this honor.

‘I will be in Pune today, where I will accept the Lokmanya Tilak National Award. I am indeed humbled that I have been conferred this award, which is closely associated with the work of such a great personality in our history,” PM Modi added in his tweet.

The Award was constituted by Tilak Smarak Mandir Trust in 1983, to honour the legacy of Lokmanya Tilak. The award is given to people who have worked for the progress and development of the nation and whose contributions can only be looked upon as remarkable and extraordinary. It is presented every year on August 1st, Lokmanya Tilak’s death anniversary.

Prime Minister will become the 41st recipient of the award. The former recipients include luminaries such as Shankar Dayal Sharma, Pranab Mukherjee, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Indira Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, NR Narayana Murthy, and E Sreedharan, among others.

“At around 11 am, Prime Minister will perform Darshan and Pooja at Dagdusheth Mandir. At 11:45 am, he will be conferred Lokmanya Tilak National Award. Thereafter, at 12:45 pm, Prime Minister will flag off metro trains and inaugurate and lay the foundation stone of various development projects,” read the official statement from the PMO.

It added that during his day-long Pune visit, PM Modi will also flag off Metro trains, marking the inauguration of services on completed sections of the two corridors of Pune Metro Phase I.

These sections are from Phugewadi station to Civil Court station and Garware College station to Ruby Hall Clinic station. The foundation stone for this project was laid earlier by Prime Minister Modi in 2016. The new sections will connect important places of Pune city such as Shivaji Nagar, Civil Court, Pune Municipal Corporation office, Pune RTO and Pune railway station.

“The inauguration is an important step towards realising the vision of the Prime Minister to provide the citizens with modern and environment-friendly mass rapid urban transport systems across the country,” the official release informed.

The design of some of the Metro stations on the route draws inspiration from Maratha warrior Chhatrapati Shivaji. The Civil Court Metro station is one of the deepest in the country, at 33.1 metres.

Prime Minister Modi will also inaugurate a waste-to-energy plant of the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC). Built at a cost of about Rs 300 crores, it will use up about 2.5 lakh MT of waste annually to produce electricity, the statement informed.

“Under the Housing for All, the Prime Minister will hand over more than 1280 houses constructed under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana by PCMC. He will also hand over more than 2650 PMAY houses constructed by Pune Municipal Corporation. Further, Prime Minister will also lay the foundation stone of around 1190 PMAY houses to be constructed by PCMC, and of over 6400 houses constructed by Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority,” it added.