Aiswarya S Menon, a senior assistant loco pilot of the Chennai Division of Southern Railway, will be among 8,000 special guests at the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his new government on Sunday, officials said.
Currently working on Vande Bharat trains, Ms Menon has completed more than 2 lakh footplate hours piloting various trains such as the Vande Bharat Express and Jan Shatabdi.
She has also worked on the Chennai-Vijayawada and Chennai-Coimbatore Vande Bharat Express services since their introduction.
Ms Menon has received accolades from senior officials for her agility, alertness, and comprehensive knowledge of railway signalling.
She will be among railway employees who have been invited to attend PM Modi’s third oath ceremony, to be held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Sunday evening.
Surekha Yadav, Asia’s first woman loco pilot, will also attend the oath-taking ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Ms Yadav, who is piloting the Vande Bharat train from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus-Solapur, is reportedly among ten loco pilots invited for the ceremony.
She became India’s first female train driver in 1988 and is also the first woman loco pilot of the semi-high speed Vande Bharat Express.
Sanitation workers, transgenders, and labourers who worked on the Central Vista Project will also be among the special guests at the swearing-in ceremony of the new government, sources told NDTV.
Arrangements are being made for over 8,000 guests at Rashtrapati Bhavan, sources said.
Narendra Modi will take oath as the prime minister for a third consecutive term on Sunday evening after President Droupadi Murmu invited him to form the government on Friday.
The president is scheduled to administer the oath of office and secrecy to the prime minister and other members of the Union Council of Ministers at 7:15 pm on Sunday at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Various South Asian leaders have been invited to the ceremony. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe have already confirmed their presence.
Invites have also been reportedly sent to Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, his Bhutan counterpart Tshering Tobgay, and Mauritius PM Pravind Jugnauth.
In 2014, the leaders of the SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) countries attended PM Modi’s first swearing-in ceremony, and in 2019, leaders of the BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) countries attended the event.
PM Modi is the second Indian to win a third straight term in power after the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. However, unlike Jawaharlal Nehru, it would be a coalition government as the BJP couldn’t secure a majority on its own in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The party was reduced to 240 seats from its overwhelming majority of 303 in 2019. The BJP-led NDA, which had won 352 parliamentary constituencies in 2019, has also come down to 293 but is above the majority mark of 272.
PM Modi and the BJP are relying on their allies to form the government. The two biggest BJP partners are Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party, which got 16 seats, and Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United, which secured 12.
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