Motivate students to take up innovative projects says B Janardhan Reddy

Hyderabad: Education Secretary B Janardhan Reddy on Tuesday said the Central government has been giving awards to one lakh students every year for their innovative projects. He urged the District Education Officers (DEO) to motivate every student to take advantage of the opportunity.

Addressing a one-day workshop of DEOs held here under the aegis of the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) and NCERT, he said every employee should work hard in their respective professions with scientific temper and bring value addition to their work.

He said that every year the Centre, with an aim to encourage one lakh new innovative projects in the country, has announced awards to students. But there is not much progress and the number of students engaged in innovative projects is few.

It was against this backdrop that DEOs should work proactively in involving students to take advantage of the opportunity. He said the Centre is giving financial support of Rs 10,000 depositing into the students accounts for every innovative project.

Each school can send a minimum three and maximum of five projects. He said out of one lakh innovative projects, as many as 10,000 best projects would be shortlisted at the district level. Further, 1,000 best projects would be shortlisted for the State-level out of the best projects identified at the district level.

Scientists working in the premier scientific institutions will act as mentors for the students designed the 1,000 best projects to further fine-tune and create models out of them, he said.

The Projects will be showcased at a national level exhibition. A 60 best projects selected at the national exhibition would be presented at an exhibition which would be held at Rastrapathi Bhavan.

These projects would also get preference in Startup India programme, he said. Commissioner of School Education T Vijayakumar said the State had secured the third position at the national level in 2018. Besides, five out of the 60 innovative projects selected were from Telangana. One project had got the third position at the national level, he said.

NIF Scientist Thushar Garg, NCERT, Telangana Director B Seshu Kumari and DEOs and District Science Officers from the 31 districts of the State participated in the workshop.