Creating a historic benchmark by crossing 1600 plus offers in the Phase I of placement season 2021, IIT Kharagpur celebrated its 67th Convocation on December 18, 2021. Shri Dharmendra Pradhan, Honourable Minister of Education and Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of India graced the occasion as the Chief Guest. Shri Sanjiv Goenka, Chairman, Board of Governors, IIT Kharagpur honoured us with his virtual presence. With prolific advancements towards engaging new advents in technological pursuits and branching out to diverse fields of medical, law, management and entrepreneurship, for the first time IIT Kharagpur is proud to bestow a Lifetime Achievement Award to Prof. M A Ramlu who served as the founder Head of the Department of Mining Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and retired as an Officiating Director of IIT Kharagpur. Along with Prof Ramlu, five awardees including Prof. Sadhan Kumar De, Prof. Biswa Nath Chatterji, Puran Chand Dang, Shri Gopal Rajgarhia and Dr. Asoke Kumar Deysarkar were conferred the Life Fellow Awards of IIT Kharagpur 2021. 5 pioneers comprising of Prof. Suresh Chandra Mishra, Commander VK Jaitly, Dr. Mohan Rao, Krishan Mohan Khanna and Dr. Mukund Padmanabhan were also honoured with the Distinguished Alumnus Awards. This year IIT Kharagpur conferred the Doctor of Sciences (Honoris Causa) to 3 eminent personalities namely Dr. Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, Dr. Tessy Thomas and Professor Harish Chandra Verma.
Today we are felicitating 1573 UG, 1253 PG, 34 MS, 333 Research Scholars along with 333 Ph.D (i.e., 302 Ph.D + 1 Joint MS- Ph.D + 12 Joint M. Tech/MCP- Ph.D + 18 Joint M.Sc- Ph. D), 34 MS, 918 M. Tech, 47 MCP, 120 MBA, 28 EMBA, 3 MMST, 20 MHRM, 17 LLM, 39 LLB, 61 PGDBA (a tri-institute programme with IIM Kolkata and ISI Kolkata), 557 Dual Degree, 450 B.Tech (Hons), 38 B.Arch (Hons), 4 six-year integrated M.Sc and M.Tech, 217 five-year integrated M.Sc, 7 three-year M.Sc and 300 two-year M.Sc degrees.
This year the President of India Gold Medal for the best academic performance among the outgoing B. Tech. (Hons.) and B. Arch. (Hons.) students was awarded to Mr. Gurjot Singh Suri, Department of Computer Science and Engineering who hails from Assam. A district topper in high school, he was awarded scholarship by the Government of Assam on being selected for IIT Kharagpur. He is currently working as a Software Engineer in Uber India. ThePresident of India Gold Medalfor the best all-round performance among the B. Tech. (Hons.) and B. Arch. (Hons.) outgoing students is awarded to Mr. Manthan Patel, Department of Mechanical Engineering. An avid robotics enthusiast from Ahmedabad, he represented the institute multiple times at various International and Inter-IIT Tech competitions. He is a recipient of the DAAD-WISE Research Scholarship (Completed at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany) as well as the OP Jindal Engineering and Management Scholarship. He is currently pursuing M Sc in robotics at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. The Prime Minster of India Gold Medal for the best academic performance among the Dual Degree and Integrated M Sc. Outgoing students is awarded to Mr. Omar Eqbal, Department of Computer Science and Engineering. A topper, a NTSE scholar, selected for KVPY fellowship from Patna, Omar Eqbal is currently working as a software engineer at Nutanix.
The Dr. Jnan Chandra Ghosh Memorial Gold Medal for the best all-round performance among the Dual Degree and Integrated M.Sc. outgoing students is being given to Harsh Maheshwari from the Department of Electrical Engineering. Among the others are Chirag Arora of the Department of Chemistry, who is awarded the Professor Jagadish Chandra Bose Memorial Gold Medal for the best academic performance among the outgoing students of all 2-year M. Sc. courses in the Science disciplines, Arshdeep Singh of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering is awarded the Director’s Gold Medal for the best academic performance among the students completing M. Tech. and MCP courses and Jaskaran Singh of Reliability Engineering is awarded the Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma Gold Medal for the best all-round performance among the M. Tech. and MCP outgoing students. The Chairman, Board of Governor’s Gold Medal for PG category is awarded to Naveen Narasimhachar Joshi and for UG category to Buddhadeb Mondal.
Shri Dharmendra Pradhan, Education Minister, Govt. of India in his address said that it is a privilege to enter into the ecosystem of IIT Kharagpur which was chosen as the first Centre of Excellence in the country after independence. He said that the Indian Knowledge system has been established on the grounds of Hijli Detention Camp which enriches the historic culture of IIT Kharagpur and is recognized as the post-independence temple of learning. He added that IIT Kharagpur will be the epicentre of change that traverses around the world in the coming years as it has a heritage and sacraments of sacrifice. He added that today we need new ideas to originate from India in the global scenario and India will be the fastest growing economy in the coming years. He also said that achieving successful 100 crore vaccinations was possible because of the IITs and NITs of this country. In the 21st century, the economy of the world will be run by those who have the market, the qualitative low cost workforce and the critical minds. He added that India can produce clean energy at one fourth of the cost compared to European countries which would be made possible by the IITians that is already proven in many verticals. He also added that India needs to build a low cost energy attracting manufacturing units of the world which will lead to economic empowerment of the country. He said that IIT Kharagpur should become the epicentre of major research initiatives that can make India a global power like America, and that IIT Kharagpur should innovate ways for incorporating MSMEs and implement alternate energy into a localized funded grid. He also informed about the leadership role IIT Kharagpur has taken in the area of VLSI chip design. He concluded saying that there should be “Purva Uday” (Rise of Eastern India) leading to investments in innovation for community welfare.
Prof V. K Tewari, Director IIT Kharagpur said that the institute hopes to bring life back to normal by calling back all students by next session notwithstanding the next variant OMICRON. He said that IIT KGP was successful in incorporating the provisions of NEP 2020 by revising its curriculum in UG/PG level be it credit bank or seamless movements of students in any discipline. He also said that the faculties as well as the students have dedicatedly designed and developed several equipment related to healthcare including COVIRAP, Painless needle, telemedicine, social distancing device etc. Expanding its horizons in Medical Sciences and Medical Engineering, the new Super-Speciality Hospital in the name of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee has started its OPD with 14 visiting specialist with 250 beds. He added that in the coming years, his mission is to take this institute to top 10 universities of the world for which seven niche areas comprising Advanced Manufacturing Systems for Industry 4.0, Safety Engineering & Analytics, Quality & Reliability, Healthcare, Precision Agriculture & Food Nutrition, Smart Infrastructure and Advanced Transportation are identified. He concluded that IIT KGP has made history by getting the highest placement offers among all IITs and aims to become the global benchmark in education.
Content Writer:- Poulami Mondal, Digital & Creative Media Executive (Creative Writer)
Email: poulami.mondal@iitkgp.ac.in, media@iitkgp.ac.in, Ph. No.: +91-3222-282004