By IANS,
New Delhi : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Saturday gave away the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Awards to 21 scientists, institutions and to Mahindra and Mahindra for their flagship vehicle Scorpio.
The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Awards for 2007 went to 11 scientists, including Narayanaswamy Srinivasan of Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science for his contributions in the area of computational genomics.
The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar awards are annually awarded by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which is the premier industrial research and development organisation of the Indian government.
The award, which is given with the aim to recognise outstanding work in science and technology, is named after CSIR founder director Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar.
At the award function Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal was also present.
The others who were awarded were Upinder Singh Bhalla of the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, Amalendu Chandra of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur and A. Ajayaghosh of the National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology in Thiruvananthapuram.
Rama Govindarajan of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore and B.V. Rajarama Bhat of the Indian Statistical Institute in Bangalore were the other award winners.
The 2008 award went to 10 scientists.
L.S. Shashidhara of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology of CSIR Hyderabad, Jarugu Narasimha Moorthy of the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur and P.N. Vinayachandran of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore were the eminent personalities who were given the awards.
The prime minister also gave away the CSIR award for science and technology innovations for rural development.
For 2007, the award was conferred jointly on the National Research Centre on Yak (NRC-Yak) in Dirang in Arunachal Pradesh for “improvement of sustainable Yak husbandry practices in the Himalayan Region”.
The other institute that received the award was Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) in Phaltan in Maharashtra along with National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) in Pune for “use of the FecB (Booroola) gene in Deccani breed of sheep to increase lamb production and thereby the incomes of shepherds”.
The CSIR award for 2008 jointly went to Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute (CSMCRI) in Bhavnagar in Gujarat for “innovations in the area of salt for rural development” and Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (CIMAP) in Lucknow for “Biovillage strategy for agri-business of medicinal and aromatic plants”.
The CSIR Diamond Jubilee technology award 2007 was given to Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) Limited for “development and commercialisation of Scorpio”.
The Scorpio ‘W’ is a new and improved version of M&M’s state-of-the-art flagship vehicle, the Scorpio.
“Forty-three incredible new features separate this vehicle from its earlier predecessors. It exhibits improved drive, performance, handling, and styling. Each feature of the vehicle has been designed as per customer’s convenience, ensuring superior customer satisfaction,” a statement issued here said.