New Delhi: Soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the names for the landing site of ISRO’s last two moon missions, the BJP went on all gun blazing against the Congress accusing the grand old party of keeping family first. PM Modi today met ISRO scientists and made a number of announcements from the ISRO office.
Modi said that the site where Chandrayaan-3 landed will be known as ShivShakti, the Chandrayaan-2 impact site will be called ‘Tiranga’ and August 23, the day of the successful landing of of the third lunar mission, will be celebrated as National Space Day.
Taking to Twitter, BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawala said, “India first versus family first! Impact/Landing point names on Moon – 1. Chandrayaan1: Jawahar Point 2. Chandrayaan2: Tiranga Point 3. Chandrayaan3: Shivshakti Point. Lander was called Vikram Lander after Vikram Sarabhai. Had it been UPA they would have never sent Chandrayaan 2 & 3 & if they did they would have named it Indira Point and Rajiv Point.”
BJP leader CT Ravi said, “Chandrayaan 1 landing spot, 2008 – Jawahar Point. Chandrayaan 3 landing spot, 2023 – Shiv Shakti Point, Difference between Dynasts and Nationalists!”
Notably, during the Congress government, the Chandrayaan-1 landing site was named ‘Jawahar Point’. There has been a credit war between the BJP and Congress over the sucess of ISRO’s missions. While the BJP credited PM Modi for the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission saying that the Modi government gave the much needed push to the space sector in the last 9 years, the Congress claimed that it was former PM Jawahar Lal Nehru who laid the foundation of ISRO in 1962.