AWARDS DECEMBER 2013

AWARDS DECEMBER 2013

• Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA), operated by GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd, has been awarded the ‘Sword of Honour’ for safety management. The award was in recognition of its effective implementation of occupational health and safety management systems from the British Safety Council for health and safety works at the airport. The ‘Sword of Honor’ is considered to be the Oscar of the Safety World. RGIA is the first Indian airport to receive this honor in the world.SGK Kishore, CEO, GHIAL, in a statement said: "The ‘Sword of Honor’ places a huge responsibility on us to sustain the initiatives and take our safety management system to the next higher level.’ The award was presented recently in London.
  
• The prestigious CSI Nihilent National e-Governance Awards 2012-13 was awarded to the Project Lakshya - EMPOWERING CONSUMERS: Transparent Supply Chain and Efficient Subsidy Administration on 14th Dec 2013, at Vishakhapatnam as part of 48th Annual Convention of Computer Society of India (CSI-2013). The award was received by Dr. Neeraj Mittal, Joint Secretary Marketing, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, at the ceremony along with the team of officers from the Oil Marketing Companies. This award is recognition of the IT initiatives undertaken by ministry to improve LPG distribution system efficiency by bringing transparency and competition in LPG marketing and by plugging the subsidy leakages in LPG Supply Chain.
  
• Eminent historian Bipan Chandra on 17 December 2013 was awarded Itihas Ratna from Asiatic Society Bihar. He was honoured by O.P. Jaiswal, the Secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bihar in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Campus, New Delhi. Some of his books are: India after Independence, In the Name of Democracy: JP Movement and Emergency, Essays on Colonialism, Nationalism and Colonialism in Modern India, Communalism and the Writing of Indian History, History of Modern India, The Epic Struggle, Essays on Indian Nationalism. Bipan Chandra is the fourth historian to be honored with the Itihas Ratna by the society. The three others, who have been honoured with the Itihas Ratna are: Ram Sharan Sharma, Irfan Habib, J S Grewal.
  
• IRCON International Limited, the country’s largest construction, Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) of Ministry of Railways, has been awarded the prestigious India Pride Awards for Excellence in Central PSUs in India Image Enhancement. The Award was received by Mohan Tiwari, CMD, IRCON, from Dr. M.M. Pallam Raju, Union Minister for Human Resources Development at a function in the capital. The Award was instituted by Dainik Bhaskar group in 2009 to honour the PSUs in their areas of excellence. IRCON had achieved a PBT of more than Rs. 1,000 crore in the fiscal 2012-13. During the last five years, the Company has achieved phenomenal growth and has recorded a compounded annual growth rate of 44.61% in terms of PBT with five-fold increase in foreign share of business. The Company has earned total foreign exchange of Rs. 2,117 crore in the last five years. IRCON has so far completed over 100 projects in more than 20 countries.
  
• Bollywood lyricist Javed Akhtar, Bengali poet Subodh Sarkar, and Bodo poet Anil Boro are among those selected for this year's Sahitya Akademi Awards, which were announced on 19 December. In all there are eight poetry books, four essays, three novels, two short stories and travelogues each, and one each of autobiography, memoirs and plays selected for this prestigious literary award, an Akademi statement said. The awarded poetry books include Akhtar's "Lava" (collection of Urdu poetry), Sarkar's "Dwaipayan Hrader Dhare" (Bengali), Boro's "Delphini Onthai Mwdai Arw Gubun Gubun Khonthai" (Bodo), Sitaram Sapolia's "Doha Satsai" (Dogri), and Radhakant Thakur's "Chaladuravani" (Sanskrit). The awards were recommended by jury members representing 22 Indian languages and approved by the executive board of the Sahitya Akademi which met on 18th December, under the chairmanship of Academy president Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari. The winners of the Akademi awards in Assamese and Gujarati languages will be declared later. The authors will be awarded March 11 next year during the Festival of Letters organised here by the Sahitya Akademi. They will be honoured with an engraved-copper plaque, a shawl, and a cheque of Rs.100,000. Temsula Ao's Laburnum for My Head (English) and Mohi-ud-Din Reshi's "Aina Aatash" (Kashmiri) won in the short story section while M.N. Paloor was awarded for his autobiography "Kathayillathavante Katha" (Malayalam). Satish Kalsekar won the award for his essay "Vachanaryachi Rojanishee" (Marathi). This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
  
• The Directorate General of Foreign Trade’s electronic Bank Realization Certificate (e-BRC) project has won the 2013 eASIA Award under Trade Facilitation category as announced by Asia Pacific Council for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (AFACT) in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on November 29, 2013. The Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Anand Sharma expressed his happiness and congratulated officers and staff on winning 2013 eASIA Award. This award is administered by AFACT. e-BRC project launched on June 5, 2012 created an integrated platform for receipt, processing and subsequent use of all Bank Realization related information by exporters, banks, central and state government departments. It was made mandatory with effect from August 17, 2012. e-BRC project enables banks to upload Foreign Exchange realization information relating to merchandise goods exports on to the DGFT server under a secured protocol. So far 89 banks operating in India, including foreign banks and cooperative banks have uploaded more than 64 lakh e-BRCs on to the DGFT server. This initiative has reduced the cost of transaction for exporters by eliminating their interface with bank (for issuance of BRC purposes) and enhanced the productivity of banks and DGFT.
  
• A well-known Pakistani student activist and an anti-slavery campaigner from Mauritania are among the winners of the 2013 United Nations Human Rights Prize, it was announced on 5 December. The Prize, which is bestowed once in every five years, is an honorary award given to individuals and organisations in recognition of outstanding achievement in human rights. Previous recipients include Amnesty International and former presidents Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela. The six winners announced today are: Biram Dah Abeid of Mauritania, a son of freed slaves who works to eradicate the heinous practice; Hiljmnijeta Apuk of Kosovo, a campaigner for the rights of people with disproportional restricted growth (short stature); Liisa Kauppinen of Finland, President emeritus of the World Federation of the Deaf; Khadija Ryadi, Former President of the Morocco Association for Human Rights; Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice (the Constitutional Court); and Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot by the Taliban for attending classes and is now a renowned education activist. The award ceremony will take place at UN Headquarters in New York on 10 December 2013, as part of the annual commemoration of Human Rights Day, which will this year include the observance of the 20th anniversary of the creation of OHCHR and the adoption of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action.