Dr R Puniyani, Setu Charitable trust to get Communal Harmony Award

New Delhi, Jan 25 (UNI) Dr Ram Puniyani and Setu Charitable Trust have been selected for the National Communal Harmony Award for the year 2007 for promoting national integration and communal harmony.

The jury, headed by Vice-President Mohammad Hamid Ansari, selected Dr. Ram Puniyani in the individual category and Mumbai based Setu Charitable Trust for the organisation category. They would get a citation and cash award of Rs 2 lakh in the individual category and Rs 5 lakh in the organisation category.

Dr Ram Puniyani, a former Professor at IIT, Mumbai has been spreading the message of peace and amity through lectures, publications, workshops and meetings and by travelling extensively to different parts of the country disseminating messages of secularism, pluralism and communal harmony.

The Setu Charitable Trust, Mumbai, which was established in 1994, is engaged in the rehabilitation of riot victims and their families and more specially, children orphaned by communal, caste and terrorist violence in Mumbai and in other parts of the country.

The work of the Setu Charitable Trust in the field of community development, mobilisation and awareness building among the deprived sections of society, such as, poor women and underprivileged children living in urban slums and rural areas, and rehabilitation of sexually exploited women in Parbhani is well-known.

The National Communal Harmony Awards were instituted in 1996 by the National Foundation for Communal Harmony (NFCH), an autonomous organisation set up by the Home Ministry, with a view to demonstrate due appreciation and recognition by the central Government of the efforts of individuals and organisations/institutions for promotion of communal harmony and national integration in a sustained manner over a sufficiently long period of time.

UNI AJ SB AS1454