Submarine sortie: After taking a sortie on Navy surveillance and anti-submarine aircraft P8I last week, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is scheduled to dive deep underwater in a submarine on Friday. Singh, who is at Karwar in Karnataka on a visit, will take a sortie in the indigenously made Navy’s Kalvari class submarine. The sortie will last a few hours and Singh will witness all aspects of underwater operations. With the underwater sortie, Singh will have witnessed all three dimensions of the Navy’s operational capabilities — on surface, aerial and underwater. For surface operations, he had in September 2019 gone on board the Navy’s only aircraft carrier, INS Vikramaditya, in September 2019. For aerial operations, it was the P8I sortie last week, which will now be followed by the submarine sortie for underwater operations. In spotlight: Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting L Murugan keeps a low profile. Usually at I&B events, the senior I&B Minister, Anurag Thakur, takes the limelight. But as Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended events in Tamil Nadu on Thursday, Murugan's home state, the spotlight was on him. Amid cheers from the crowd, the Prime Minister said Murugan, “son of this great soil”, had just returned from France, where he attended the Cannes Film Festival. He said Murugan walked the red carpet there in traditional Tamil attire, making “Tamils all over the world very proud”. Murugan stood with hands folded hands as the Prime Minister spoke about him.
