Around 24,708 students, including 78 Gold medallists & 82 Ph.D holders were conferred upon with the degrees at the 16th Convocation ceremony of Indraprastha University (GGSIPU) on Tuesday.
A Gold medal in the memory of the former registrar of the University Late B. P. Joshi was given to Dr Hemant K Arya. Also, the Sidharth Khitolia Award was given to Manisha Puri, a passing out student for her outstanding work in the field of Architecture.
The Chancellor of the University & Lieutenant Governor of Delhi Vinai Kumar Saxena presided over the function. He said, “the image is reflected both in the water and in our speech, but water reflects only the picture, whereas, the speech reflects the character of a human being”.
He appreciated the integrative approach of the university to provide the ancient knowledge of Ayurveda, Unani, Homeopathy, Gita and Upanishads, along with the emerging modern fields like Design and Innovation, Automation and Robotics, Pharmaceuticals, AI, etc.
Presenting the University report, Padmashri Prof. (Dr.) Mahesh Verma, Vice Chancellor said that from a small temporary campus at Kashmere Gate, the University has grown up to two huge campuses in Dwarka and East Delhi with over 90000 students, 191 programs, across 18 schools of studies, 3 centres of Excellence and 113 affiliated institutions across Delhi and NCR.
The university has attained highest A++ Grade in the 3rd cycle of NAAC accreditation for a period of 7 years and is at 74 in NIRF ranking. Some of the other highlights included ‘Mega IPU Health mela’, ‘Anugoonj’, 12 patents in the last 2 years, Alumni meet, Indraprastha Incubation Foundation and Atal Incubation Centre promoting start-ups, he added.
Delivering the convocation address, chief guest, B. V. R. Subrahmanyam, CEO of Niti Aayog said, “the name of the university is relevant for being named after the 10th Sikh Guru Govind Singh and for the land of Pandavas, who were known for their finest human values”.
India stands at Number 2 with regard to imparting higher education in 1200 universities for 4.2 crore students. And, we are striving towards becoming the largest higher education system by 2047 by enrolling over 9 crore students in the colleges and universities. Demographic dividend can be achieved by investing in students and education in the four key areas: Providing access;
Promoting research; Creating a culture of innovation and incubations; and Providing holistic education, he added.
To mark the Silver Jubilee celebrations, a Postal Stamp and the special cover was released by Mr Ashok Kumar, Post Master General. A Commemorative Coin and a ‘Silver Jubilee Book’ were also released on the occasion.