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    How is your health? PM asks in surprise morning phone calls to nearly 100 Seniors

    Synopsis

    Narendra Modi has made it a point this week to make these short phone calls, lasting about three-five minutes, daily to veteran leaders of the party and the organisation across the country at around 9 AM as he begins his day, ET has learnt.

    modi ani 2ANI
    NEW DELHI: “How is your health? Take special care of it” — 83-year-old Kuldip Raj Gupta, a veteran BJP leader in Jammu, was surprised when he heard the Prime Minister asking him this on the other side of the phone line on Thursday.

    Narendra Modi has made it a point this week to make these short phone calls, lasting about three-five minutes, daily to veteran leaders of the party and the organisation across the country at around 9 AM as he begins his day, ET has learnt.

    Officials told ET that the PM will be calling up nearly 100 such seniors in all who are mostly above 80 years of age, inquiring about their health and trying to get feedback from them on what they feel about the present lockdown measures and the situation on the ground. “These people have seen a lot in their lives and their feedback is invaluable for the PM”, an official said.

    The calls are aimed at knowing about the health of these aged party leaders and workers, whom Modi has known in the past. The effort is to impress upon them to take care of their health amid the Covid-19 pandemic, given their age and the vulnerability of the aged to the coronavirus, officials told ET.

    While talking to Gupta, Modi reminisced about the bond they shared when he was in charge of the party in J&K, the veteran leader said. “He told me that he would imagine that I would still be keeping himself busy at home during the lockdown and not sitting idle. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the PM speak to me on my health,” he said.

    Chamal Lal Gupta, a former minister of state for defence who also lives in Jammu, got a call from the PM on Wednesday. Modi asked both these leaders about their view on the efforts being made to fight the coronavirus in the union territory of Jammu & Kashmir.
    Modi has also called up the former Udupi municipal president and RSS worker Somashekar Bhat and the two spoke of how they had met during the Emergency in Jaipur. Bhat was jailed along with Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani in Bengaluru during the Emergency.

    The PM this week also called up 106-year-old former MLA Shri Narain in Uttar Pradesh’s Kushinagar, veteran BJP leader in Karnataka DH Shankarmurthy and former Puttur MLA and RSS leader Urimajalu Ram Bhat.

    Ninety-nine-year-old Ratna Bapa, a former MLA from Junagarh in Gujarat, got a call from the PM earlier this week asking him about his health and if he still remembered that Modi had visited his house many years back. The former MLA had donated Rs 51,000 from his pension savings to the state government fund last week for fighting the coronavirus and Modi thanked him for it. Bapa told the PM how, even at that age, he climbed the stairs of the Junagarh collectorate to hand over a cheque to the collector as the elevator did not work.



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