Dr Banikanta Kakati Merit Award handed over to 5 Cachar students in Silchar Women's College

Under the ‘Assam Pragyan Bharati Scooty’ scheme of the Assam State Government’s Higher Education Department, female students all across the state securing 1st division result in the Higher Secondary examination are awarded a scooter every year. This scheme of the Banikanta Kakati Merit Award was announced during the previous tenure of the Sarbananda Sonowal led Assam Government. In Silchar today morning on June 17, five meritorious students who had qualified for the prestigious Banikanta Kakati Merit Award for the year 2018 and 2019 were presented with one scooter each in an event organized at the Silchar Women’s College premises in Shillongpatty.

The award ceremony event was attended by Chief Guest Silchar MLA Dipayan Chakraborty, District Development Commissioner Rajib Roy, Cachar District BJP President Bimalendu Roy and Women’s College Principal Dr Manoj Kumar Paul. In the academic year 2018 and 2019, a total of 390 female students in the Cachar district have qualified for this prestigious Banikanta Kakati Merit award. Due to the prevailing Covid situation as well as keeping logistics in mind, the event was kept short and simple and only 5 female students from different institutions of the district were handed over this award along with the keys of the Hero Pleasure scooters to the recipients. The recipient students were also accompanied by their proud parents who were seen clapping for their daughters’ achievements with a smile on their face.

Silchar MLA Dipayan Chakraborty, while addressing the event, said, “For this noble initiative to acknowledge the success of female students all across the state, I congratulate the Assam Government for taking up this initiative to motivate students to study harder and opt for higher education in the state. In 2018 and 2019, around 15,000 students throughout the state had qualified for the Banikanta Kakati Merit Award. This year too, all of the meritorious students shall be awarded a scooter to motivate them for further studies. And this initiative has produced more positive results for the students in Assam, hence I congratulate the Assam Government and our CM Himanta Biswa Sarma for this noble initiative.”

The Silchar MLA also mentioned that he has noticed that private institutions are doing far better result in examination than the government ones. In this context, he said, “I hope that with the help of this Banikanta Kakati Award, more students from government colleges will get motivated to work harder and achieve a better result in the future. For this, I also ask the government teachers to put extra effort so that their students too can compete with the private college ones and come up with better results.”

Principal of the Women’s College, Dr Manoj Kumar Paul, said, “In 2018 and 2019, a total of 390 students in the Cachar district had qualified for the Banikanta Kakati Merit Award which provides a scooty to each female student. This was supposed to get underway long ago but didn’t happen due to Covid. Today, through this inauguration ceremony, where 5 such meritorious students across the district were awarded the certificate and the keys to the scooter, the scheme has officially started in the Cachar district. Soon rest of the 390 students too will get their awards according to the serial list. I congratulate all the worthy candidates for achieving this award.”