Shri Ram Nath Kovind, Hon’ble President of India conferred the National Geoscience Awards for the year 2017(11 nos.) in New Delhi today.Shri Narendra Singh Tomar, Hon’ble Minister of Rural Development, Panchayati Raj and Mines, Shri HaribhaiParthibhai Chaudhary, Hon’ble Minister of State (Mines), Shri Anil Mukim, Secretary, Ministry of Mines, Shri N. Kutumba Rao, Director General, Geological Survey of India, senior officers of Ministry of Mines, GSI, and other Central Ministries also graced the occasion.

In his address, Shri Tomar applauded the awardees for their innovation and research in the fields of Geosciences and also showed his indebtedness to the President for distributing these awards. He aptly reminded the awardees the challenges of geosciences and its age-old contributions towards the economic development of the States and the local community. He also mentioned about the recent endeavours put forward by Ministry of Mines in amending the Mining Regulations that fostered the mineral-rich States in achieving additional economic resources through auctioning of mining blocks and also the relentless scientific endeavour that GSI is putting forward in mineral explorations and other fields of Geosciences.

In the welcome address, Shri Anil Mukim, Secretary, Mines outlined briefly the history of this Award which started way back in 1966 by the Ministry of Mines. He emphasised that the scientific excellence has its relevance only when it benefits the society and towards this objective, the disciplines for the National Geoscience Awards have been selected carefully. He congratulated all the awardees for their outstanding scientific performance and showed his gratitude to the President for gracing the occasion and distributing these prestigious awards.

Eleven National Geoscience Awards for the year 2017 were conferred by the President on 22 geoscientists for their outstanding contributions in nine different fields of geosciences. Dr.ShibSankarGanguli, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur received the Young Scientist Award – 2017 for his meritorious contributions in the field of Applied Geoscience.

At the end of the function, a Group Discussion amongst the Present and Earlier Awardees on “Challenges faced by Indian Geoscience” was held under the chairmanship of Shri Anil Mukim, Secretary, Ministry of Mines. In the Group Discussion, the present and earlier awardees deliberated on various challenges as well as suggested different ways of solutions for the betterment of the Geoscience activities in the country.

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