Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted with the recipients of Rashtriya Bal Puraskar on Friday.

The Prime Minister asked the awardee children to work harder while being strongly rooted to the ground realities.

“This recognition should be a beginning to achieve more and you should realise this is not an end in itself. And such awards will inspire your peers and other children to become achievers,” said the PM.

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.

Master Siddharth Kumar Gopal (11) was honoured with the  Pradhan Mantri Bal Shakti Puraskar for his excellence in the field of Scholastics. A class 6 standard student of St Thomas Residential School, Kerala, Siddharth has been a consistent winner at the international level in various Science, Maths, English, GK and Cyber Olympiads. He has won the International Rank 1 in the International English Olympiad in 2015-16 and International Rank 3 in the National Science Olympiad in 2018-19. He has also won many prizes in essay writing, extempore, and quiz competitions. He also holds the Grade 3 certificate in Piano from the Trinity College of London and has an A2 certificate in German from the Goethe Institute.

Sanchita Tiwari (18), who has won three international medals in Archery championships, was also given the opportunity to be the torchbearer in the opening ceremony of 1st Khelo India Youth Games in 2018. Tiwari has got the Bal Shakti Puraskar for excellence in the field of 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 Kedarnath Yatra.

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

Arjun Pandey (17), who is the 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 artefacts 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 the lives 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 by the Government of India every year to recognize exceptional achievements of children in various fields i.e., innovation, scholastic achievements, social service, arts & culture, sports and bravery. Bal Shakti Puraskar carries a medal, a cash prize of Rs. 1,00,000/-, one tablet, a certificate and a citation. President Ram Nath Kovind conferred the awards to 49 children in the age group of 5-18 years at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhawan here on 22 January 2020.

The awardees will also participate in the Republic Day Parade.

The 49 awardees are from various states of India including one each from Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. The children are winners in the fields of art & culture, Innovation, Scholastic, Social Service, Sports and Bravery.