Is Modi’s Leh Hospital Visit A ‘Photo-Op’?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Leh, the capital of the union territory Ladakh. He visited the place to interact with the Indian army, air force and the police from Indo-Tibetial border, post the clashes at the border. The PM’s visit to the military hospital to speak to the injured soldiers in violent clashes at the border and the photographs from his visit triggered controversy.

Along with many others, opposition leaders from Congress have been ridiculing PM’s visit as just a publicity stunt and purely a photo-op. P Chidambaram tweeted a collage of pictures comparing Manmohan visiting the injured soldiers during his tenure as PM to the visit of Modi, which is being denounced as a set-up and nothing else.

The criticism against Modi’s visit points out the conference hall made to look like a hospital but without a bottle of water, no medical equipment, no medicines but a photographer in the place of a doctor.

This is not the first time Modi’s visit being criticized as photo-op. Earlier too, Modi’s Swach Bharat on an empty beach has sparked controversy as the seashore is all cleaned up except few plastic bottles and other stuff placed waiting just for the PM to pick them up. Also, his Yoga day pictures also attracted castigation, calling them as just a show-of for publicity and not really his yoga routine.

While the opposition and many others reprimand Modi’s Leh visit as a campaigning stunt, the fact checkers appear to contradict that version. They say Modi’s visit is real as the same conference hall is converted to a hospital of 100 beds and which is very much a part of the general hospital complex.

And for those who called the patients are not real with no injuries at all, Major Navdeep Singh clarified that the soldiers are not there for major physical injuries but for recuperation cum debriefing, a standard process.