The 12th convocation ceremony of the Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University) will be organised on Friday at Swatantrata Bhawan from 9 am. Giving this information in a press conference held here on Wednesday, the Director of the institute Prof Pramod Kumar Jain said that in this convocation, 1,660 meritorious students will be awarded degrees. In this, 954 BTech, 247 IDD, 223 M Tech/MPharma and 44 MSc students will be awarded degrees. More than 192 researchers will be awarded doctorate degrees. A total of 66 students will be awarded 108 medals (106 gold and two silver) and awards.

The chief guest of the ceremony will be Dr Sameer V Kamat, Secretary, Department of Defence (R&D) and Chairman, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

The ceremony will be presided over by Padma Shri Dr Kota Harinarayan, Chairman of the Board of Governors.

Prof Jain said that this year two students will be given the President’s Gold Medal and the Director’s Gold Medal for their excellent achievements in all fields. President’s Gold Medal will be awarded to Divyansh Chandra Roy, BTech, Electronics Engineering, for overall outstanding performance in academics at the BTech level in the institute and Raghav Soni, BTech, Electronics Engineering, will be awarded the Director’s Gold Medal for outstanding performance in all areas and displaying organisational and leadership abilities.

The Director further said that alumni are an important part of any institution. The Distinguished Alumnus Award is the highest award given by IIT (BHU) to its alumni in recognition of their achievements. A total of nine alumni will be honoured with the Distinguished Alumnus/Alumna Student Award 2023-24 in the convocation this year. These include Ghanshyam Prasad (Electrical-88) in the Professional field, Prof Alok Gupta (Mining-88) in the Academic field, Sudhir Singh (Civil-93) in the Industry/ Entrepreneurship field, Manu K Vora (Chemical-68) for Public Life, Vikas Agrawal (Chemical-95) and Soumya Sarkar (Mechanical-79) for distinguished service to the institute and Prateek Maheshwari (Mechanical-11), Dr Akshay Kumar Rathore (Electrical-03) and Abhilash Sridharan (Metallurgy-08) will be honoured with the Young Alumnus Achiever Award.

Prof Jain said that after the convocation, the DRDO Industry Academy-Centre of Excellence (DIA-CoE) will be inaugurated by Dr Sameer V Kamat at 6 pm. The rehearsal before the convocation ceremony will be held on Thursday at 4 pm at Swatantrata Bhawan, BHU.