IIT-Kharagpur holds 62nd Convocation

Two students from the Class of 2016 were given the President of India Gold Medal award at the 62nd convocation ceremony of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Kharagpur.

Prithwish Mukherjee and Soham Dan, from the computer science and engineering department respectively, scored the highest CGPA in their batch with 9.75. The award is given to the best academic performer every year. This year, however, two students were shared the award.

“It was a tie between them. The institution has rules to break the tie. But both of them have worked equally hard, and should deserve the award. It was a gesture from the board of the Governor,” said PP Chakrabarti, director of IIT-Kharagpur. “This is the first time that they have given the award to two students,” Chakrabarti added.

However, K. Gopalakrishnan, co-founder of the IT giant Infosys, who came to address the students on the 62nd convocation said: “The Indian economy has failed to provide enough jobs, though it is growing well. The world is witnessing income deficit especially after the financial meltdown in 2008.

“India is a strong economy. So we are unaffected. But we cannot see large numbers of well-paid jobs are being created. We need to find the solutions,” Gopalakrishnan added.

He also cautioned upcoming engineers against the destructive side effects of technologies and uses of some of the technologies and innovations. He took an example of the driverless cars”. It should not be used without safeguard. Those vehicles could be used for any destructive purpose too,” he said.

At the convocation, students of M.Sc, MS, M.Tech, MCP, MBA, MHRM, law and Ph.D researchers were awarded their degrees. 

The Chairman of the board of the governor, Srikumar Banerjee was also present at the ceremony.