President, PM pay homage to Gandhi, Shastri

President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi Thursday paid tributes to Mahatma Gandhi and late prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri on their birth anniversaries.

Mukherjee paid floral tributes at the portraits of Gandhi and Shastri at the Kirnahar Shib Chandra High School in Birbhum, West Bengal, a Rashtrapati Bhavan statement said.

It was followed by the flagging-off of "children's squads" by the president on the launch of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.

Modi, too, paid floral tribute to the two leaders.

Describing Shastri as "a man with strong determination," and "a symbol of simplicity," Modi visited Shastri's memorial at Vijay Ghat on the bank of the Yamuna river in the national capital on his 109th birth anniversary.

Before paying floral tributes to Shastri, India's second prime minister after Jawaharlal Nehru, Modi paid homage to Mahatma Gandhi at his memorial at the nearby Raj Ghat.

Both Gandhi's and Shastri's birth anniversaries fall Oct 2.

Shastri, a Congress leader, served as prime minister from June 9, 1964, until his sudden death in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Jan 11, 1966.