Naidu to confer National Teachers' Award on September 5
New Delhi, Sep 3 : Like last year, Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu will confer the National Teachers' Award this year also on the occasion of Teachers' Day on September 5, the Ministry of Human Resource Development said on Monday.
Instituted in 1958 to commemorate the second President of India S. Radhakrishnan, a renowned educationist, the award was earlier conferred by the President of India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will also interact with the recipients of the award at his residence on Tuesday.
Teachers from state or central government schools and those affiliated with CBSE or CISCE are eligible for the award.
The government has made a few changes in the eligibility criteria and other rules for the awards from this year, for instance, making it online and allowing teachers to self-nominate and directly apply for the award.
The government also lifted the minimum eligibility criterion this year, making the competition open for younger teachers, unlike before when one was required to have completed 15 years in service to be considered eligible.
The government has also reduced the number of the awards to 45 from over 300, in order to "restore the prestige of the award".
The Ministry in a statement said that 6,692 teachers have applied for the award, of whom 152 were nominated for the award by states, Union Territories and other organisations.
"These nominated teachers gave a presentation before an independent jury comprising a senior educationist, during third week of August," it said.
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Sri Lanka repatriates remains of 84 Iranian sailors killed in US torpedo strike
Colombo (PTI): Sri Lanka has repatriated the remains of 84 Iranian sailors who were killed when their frigate was sunk by a US submarine, an official said.
Last week on Wednesday, Sri Lanka said it had recovered 84 bodies of Iranian sailors after the US submarine attack sank the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena off Galle on the island’s southern coast.
The ship was returning to Iran from Visakhapatnam, India, where it had participated in a naval fleet review exercise.
"Human remains were sent by the Iranian embassy on Friday - all 84", a foreign ministry spokesman said.
They were sent on a chartered Turkish airliner, which departed on Friday, reporters present at the Mattala international airport in the southern district of Hambantota said.
The Chief Magistrate, Sameera Dodangoda, gave the order on March 11 to the Director of the National Hospital at Karapitiya to hand over 84 bodies of the sailors from Iris Dena to the Embassy of Iran.
Following the magistrate's court order, the arrangements were finalised.
The bodies were kept at the Karapitiya hospital in Galle along with 32 survivors who were warded as a result of the US torpedo attack on the ship on March 4.
The Sri Lankan government had earlier said they will be keeping the bodies until the situation would improve so as to repatriate them.
They were being kept under makeshift refrigeration as the hospital’s morgue capacity was found inadequate.
The 32 survivors had been discharged on Sunday and sent to the nearby Sri Lankan airbase at Koggala, Galle.
