New Delhi: The nation today fondly remembered the country's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on his 120th birth anniversary with President Pratiba Patil and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh leading the countrymen in pay rich tributes to the leader.
Patil and Singh paid floral tributes to Nehru at Shanti Van, his memorial on the banks of Yamuna here this morning amid chants of vedic hymns and songs by a group of students.
Besides the President and Prime Minister, Vice President Hamid Ansari, UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Delhi Chief Minister and Sheila Dikshit were among the prominent persons who paid floral tributes at the memorial.
The dignitaries also released tricolour balloons in the air as students played the band.
Singh, Gandhi, Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar and BJP leader L K Advani paid floral tributes at Nehru's portrait in the Central hall of Parliament.
On the occasion, an on-the-spot drawing competition was also organised by the children's corner of Parliament library in which 268 children participated.
Cultural programmes were organised in city schools as the day is also observed as Children's Day. Nehru was fond of children and was known as Chacha Nehru during his lifetime.
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) also organised a colourful programme to celebrate Children's Day.
Around 5,000 primary school children presented cultural programme at the functions. Hundreds of students from schools located in slum clusters, resettlement colonies and other parts of the city.
In Nehru's birthplace Allahabad, Congress leaders including UPCC vice-president Shekhar Bahugna, party leader in state Assembly Pramod Tiwari, local MLA Anugrah Narain Singh and Mayor Chaudhary Jitendranath Singh gathered at the historic Anand Bhawan, the ancestral house which has been converted into a memorial and museum.
The leaders offered floral tributes to the portrait of the first Prime Minister and said that his dream to build a modern and prosperous India and promote communal harmony and a scientific temper would be fulfilled by Congress
party.
(With inputs from PTI)
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