Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar row: Govt responds to scientists, indicates Minister’s say on awardees is final

According to the selection process, subject experts are required to send their shortlists to an apex committee, which is the RVPC headed by the PSA. The RVPC then recommends the names to the Minister of Science and Technology. The information provided under “Selection Process” for the RVP awards on the government’s website had a new sentence added over the past weekend stating that “The RVPC will recommend the names to the Honourable Minister of Science & Technology, Govt. of India”. Earlier, under the selection process, the website only stated that all nominations for the award will be placed before the RVPC.

The PSA is learnt to have replied to the scientists that the selection process that is being followed is as per the website.

This is RVP’s inaugural year, under which 33 awardees were announced across four categories.

After the awards were announced by the government on August 7, some members from the apex committee and the subject expert committees sought clarity from the government on the considerations that may have influenced the final list of awardees and the exclusion of three distinguished scientists from the list of potential awardees in the final stage of selection.

The three scientists are Suvrat Raju, a physicist at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Prateek Sharma, physicist at Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and Suman Chakraborty of IIT Kharagpur, who won the Infosys Prize for Engineering and Computer Science in 2022.

Raju and Sharma, were critical of IISc for its last-minute cancellation of a discussion on UAPA last year, which was to be led by student activists Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita. Both physicists had also signed open letters on the Citizenship Amendment Act and NIA action in the Bhima Koregaon matter.