DUBAI (TIP): A 14-year-old Indian – origin student in Dubai has made a special portrait of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a gift for the Republic Day. The six-layered stencil portrait made by Saran Sasikumar from Kerala was handed over to Minister of State for External Affairs and Parliamentary Affairs V Muraleedharan on the concluding day of his three-day visit to the UAE on Thursday. “Happy to meet in #Dubai the talented young artist Saran Sasi Kumar from Kerala, now a resident in #UAE. He presented this beautiful portrait, a 6 layered stencil painting, to our PM @narendramodi ji as a Republic Day gift. Truly inspiring! My best wishes to him,” Mr Muraleedharan tweeted on Friday, sharing a photograph of him accepting the portrait from the boy and his parents. In the portrait, Prime Minister Modi is seen saluting, wearing a wide-brimmed cavalry hat with the logo of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF). According to a media report, the portrait measures 90 cm by 60 cm.

It took around six hours to draw the picture with layers of six color shades, said Saran, who has drawn 92 portraits including those of top UAE leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is not the first picture of PM Modi that Saran has drawn. The grade nine student of Dubai-based New Indian Model School had also made a five-layered stencil portrait of PM Modi — which measured 1.5m by 1m — in October last year. He has bagged a grandmaster certification from Asia Book of Records and another certificate from India Book of Records for that stencil art portrait, the report said.