IAS officer among winners of awards

[sajiv]

IAS officer among winners of awards

Bangalore: The third Manjunath Shanmugam Integrity Awards were presented by Aruna Roy, social activist and Ramon Magsaysay Award winner, jointly to Vinod Adhau (Village Revenue Officer, Anjangao Surji taluk of Amaravati District, Mahashtra), Jitendra Chaturvedi (founder and chief, DEHAT, a voluntary organisation working in the backward districts of Bahraich district, Indo-Nepal Border) and Sanjiv Chaturvedi (Deputy Forest Conservator, Panchkula, Haryana) in the city on Saturday.

The award has been instituted in memory of S. Manjunath, an alumnus of IIM-Lucknow and a sales officer with Indian Oil Corporation, who was murdered in 2005 when he took on the oil mafia.

The award is aimed at honouring and encouraging those working to uphold the values of truth and honesty in public life.

While all the three candidates were presented with a citation, Mr. Chaturvedi and his organisation, DEHAT (Development Association for Human Advancement) was presented with a cash prize of Rs. 1 lakh.

The other nominees for the award were late Manoj Gupta (Executive Engineer, Uttar Pradesh PWD, Auraiyya District, Uttar Pradesh), Pankaj Khanna (Ex-Officer of HPCL), Ashok Khemka (IAS officer, Haryana), T.R. Krishnappa (social activist and farmer, Ripponpet, Karnataka) and late Thignam Kishan Singh (Sub Divisional Officer, Manipur Civil Service).

The jury comprised S. Gopalakrishnan (CEO and Managing Director, Infosys Technologies), Rama Bijapurkar (Strategy Consultant and independent consultant on the board of many prominent companies), Shekhar Gupta (Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express).

Mr. Adhau was honoured for asking for written orders when he was asked to cut down on the number of beneficiaries for crop-loss compensation.

Ms. Aruna Roy said that the award had been presented to those who deserved it. She said that her organisation, Mazdoor Kisan Shakthi Sangathan, would continue to fight for the Whistleblowers Act.