7 students from Delhi get Bal Shakti Puraskar 2020

Seven students from Delhi have bagged the Bal Shakti Puraskar 2020 for their innovations ranging from launching a mobile-based scouting application to an app for predicting floods, bringing laurels in archery and rendering social service in difficult terrains of Kedarnath.

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The students, including two girls and five boys, were given the award by President Ram Nath Kovind Wednesday at the Rashtrapati Bhawan.

Sanchita Tiwari, who has won three international medals in archery championships, was also given the opportunity to be the torch bearer in the opening ceremony of 1st Khelo India Youth Games in 2018. Tiwari (18) got the Bal Shakti Puraskar for her excellence in sports.

In the social service category, the award has been bagged by 14-year-old Parikul Bhardwaj for providing assistance as a social worker in extremely difficult terrain. She has been acknowledged as the youngest student volunteer for social services at Kedarnatha Yatra.

Chairga Falor, who represented India in International Olympian Award on Astronomy and Astrophysics in Hungary, got the Bal Shakti Puraskar for excellence in the field of scholastic.

Arjun Pandey (17), who is a founder of ScoutMe—India’s first mobile-based scouting portal—that has been adopted by All India Football Federation (AIFF) as their official scouting platform, was awarded in the innovation category.

Joining his league is 18-year-old Raghav Puri who has made incredible technological interventions through his project “Recovering History”, which uses artificial intelligence to reconstruct broken parts of artifacts for facilitating better study of history and culture.

Also awarded in the category is Sagnik Anupam, who created an application, called Augura, which uses artificial intelligence and GIS to predict floods based on river data of previous years.

Tanish Goel (18) has come up with a scientific invention to safeguard life of fellow citizens with a machine learning-based smart drone surveillance system for which he also won the NASA Goddard Award at Conrad Spirit of Innovation Challenge held at Kennedy Space Centre.

The Bal Shakti Puraskar is given to children in the age group of 5-18 years, in the fields of innovation, social service, scholastic, sports, art and culture and bravery, and carries a medal, a cash prize of ₹1 lakh, a certificate and a citation.