PM will pray at Lord Balaji temple after Science Congress

Narendra Modi’s visit to the temple was added to his programme on Thursday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will offer prayers to Lord Balaji on Tirumala Hills on Tuesday after inaugurating the 104th Indian Science Congress at Tirupati earlier in the day. The PM’s visit to the temple was added to his programme only Thursday after it was noticed that it was not included in the original schedule.

As per the earlier sched- ule, the PM would arrive at Tirupati from Delhi by a special flight on Tuesday morning and go to the Sri Venkateswara University campus to deliver his opening address at the Science Congress at 10.30 am. After that, he was to leave for Delhi by around 1 pm. But, now that the visit to the temple has been included to his schedule, the PM will return by 3 pm the same day.

This will be the PM’s first visit to Andhra Pradesh in 2017 and it will also be an occasion for Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu who heads a high powered committee on demonetisation to take up some issues which were discussed at the panel’s last two meetings this month with the PM. This will also be the first time Naidu will be discussing the impact of demonetisation with the PM.

Sources close to the CM told this newspaper that Naidu would utilise this op- portunity to thank the PM for releasing Rs 1,985 crore for construction of the Polavaram irrigation project across Godavari River.

The Prime Minister is also expected to mention about demonetisation at the Science Congress, which is attended by nine Nobel Laureates, 200 scientists and 18,000 participants. “Science and Technology for nation’s development” is the theme of this year’s Science Congress. President Pranab Mukherjee has enquired about the impact of demonetisation of big notes and expressed his satisfaction over the measures taken by the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh governments to mitigate the difficulties faced by people due to the measure, at an official dinner hosted by Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan at the Raj Bhawan here on Tuesday.

Chief Ministers of both the states—K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) of Telangana and N. Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh—sat next to the President during the twohour long dinner attended by a large number of guests on the sprawling lawns of the Raj Bhawan and explained the various steps taken by them to promote digital transactions in their states.

Union Ministers Bandaru Dattatreya (Minister of State for Labour with independent charge) and Sujana Chowdary (Minister of State for Science and Technology), speakers of Assemblies of both the states, chairmen of legislative councils and a select gathering of celebrities, including sports personalities Sania Mirza and P.V. Sindhu, and several officials of the armed forces were present.

Pranab Mukherjee has been on a two-week long southern sojourn in Hyderabad since 22 December and was back in Delhi on Saturday night. The official dinner was hosted by the Governor, but the list of guests was cleared by the President’s staff, according to sources in the General Administration Department (GAD) of Telangana, who spoke to this newspaper.

Interestingly, the President’s informal discussions with the two Chief Ministers came a day before the Union Cabinet recommended promulgation of an ordinance to impose limits on possession of scrapped currency notes by individuals after 30 December. More interestingly, this ordinance, too, came up for discussion at the meeting.

The President himself