Chennai: Nine distinguished ISRO scientists from Tamil Nadu would be given away Rs 25 lakh each for their contribution to the scientific exploration of the moon, which had drawn the world's attention to India, Chief Minister M K Stalin announced on Monday.
Speaking at a meeting under the title ‘Shining Tamil Nadu, Dazzling Tamilians,’ organized to felicitate the nine scientists, he said that he was happy to witness the unfolding of social justice in the august gathering.
He also announced the setting up of a Rs 10 crore corpus fund to provide scholarships to those who studied engineering under the 7.5 % reservation for government schools students and now pursuing post graduate degrees in engineering.
Also nine such post graduate engineering students would get the scholarship from this year to enable them to pay the fees and also hostel expenses, Stalin said, addressing the crowd that had gathered at the Anna Centenary Library in Chennai and the 58 lakh school and college student who were watching the event through video conferencing facility.
Quoting passages from ancient Tamil literary works like Tholkappiyam and Silapathikaram, in which references were made to the sun, moon and sky, he said Tamils traditionally had a quest for space exploration that had led to the scientists in ISRO, mainly hailing from the State, studying the moon and sun successfully.
Noting with pride that nine of the scientists who were being felicitated had studied in government schools, he paid encomiums to each one of them for their remarkable achievements in space exploration as part of the ISRO’s scientific teams.
Felicitating K Sivan, Myilsami Annamalai, V Narayanan, A Rajarajan, M Sankaran, Asir Packiaraj, M Vanitha, Nihar Shaji and P Veeramuthuvel, the Chief Minister wanted them to guide more students in scientific pursuits under the ‘Naam Mudhalvan' scheme that he had launched to guide youth on following various avocations.
All the scientists from Tamil Nadu had played key roles in the Chandrayan projects, he said and explained their individual contributions.
The Indian rover landing on the moon on August 24 was a landmark event as the nation was earning the distinction after the Soviet Union (1959), United States (1964) and China (2013), he said.
