An educationist in Bhutan, a doctor in Brunei and civil society activists in Ethiopia, Israel and Poland were among the 27 people chosen on Monday for the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award (PBSA), the highest honor for overseas Indians.
The PBSA is conferred by the President as part of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Convention on non-resident Indians (NRIs), persons of Indian origin (PIOs) or organizations established and run by NRIs or PIOs in recognition of their outstanding achievements in India and abroad.
The 17th edition of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Convention will be held at Indore in Madhya Pradesh during January 8-10. The awards will be conferred by the President during the valedictory session of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas celebrations.
The recipients were chosen by a jury-cum-awards committee chaired by the vice-president. External affairs minister S Jaishankar is the vice-chair of the panel, whose other members are drawn from various walks of life. The committee considered nominations for the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Awards and unanimously selected the awardees, the external affairs ministry said.
The awardees, who represent excellence achieved by the Indian diaspora in different fields, include Jagadish Chennupati of Australia in the field of science and technology and education, Sanjeev Mehta of Bhutan in education, Dilip Loundo of Brazil in art and culture and education, Alexander Maliakel John of Brunei in medicine, Vaikuntam Iyer Lakshmanan of Canada in community welfare, Joginder Singh Nijjar of Croatia in art and culture, Ramjee Prasad of Denmark in IT and Kannan Ambalam of Ethiopia in community welfare.
The other awardees are Amal Kumar Mukhopadhyay of Germany in community welfare, Mohamed Irfaan Ali of Guyana in politics and community welfare, Reena Vinod Pushkarna of Israel in business and community welfare, Maqsooda Sarfi Shiotani of Japan in education, Rajagopal of Mexico in education, Amit Kailash Chandra Lath of Poland in business, Parmanand Sukhumal Daswani of the Republic of Congo in community welfare, Piyush Gupta of Singapore in business, Mohanlal Hira and Sanjaykumar Shivabhai Patel of South Sudan in community welfare.
Sivakumar Nadesan of Sri Lanka (community welfare), Dewanchandrebhose Sharman of Suriname (community welfare), Archana Sharma of Switzerland (science and technology), Frank Arthur Seepersad of Trinidad and Tobago (community welfare), Siddharth Balachandran of the UAE (business), Chandrakant Babubhai Patel of the UK (media), Darshan Singh Dhaliwal of the US (business and community welfare), Rajesh Subramaniam of the US (business) and Ashok Kumar Tiwary of Uzbekistan (business) are also among the awardees.
