Prez Suggests Special Bal Shree coverage of rural kids

New Delhi, Jun 10 (UNI) Honouring 50 children with Bal Shree awards today, President Pratibha Patil urged special attention to spotting creativity among rural and disadvantaged children.

As many as 50 children picked by Bal Bhavans around the nation were given away National Bal Shree Awards-2007 at a function presided over by Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh.

The honorees included three children of special needs- Gore Bhatla and Shruti Bhatla from Kanpur and Rizwan Azimuddin Shaikh of Vadodara - selected in Creative Art Stream.

The Bal Shree Scheme draws on the rationale that creativity is a human potential key to self-expression and self-development.

The scheme identifies creativity in 9-to-16-year-olds in four areas- performance, art, scientific innovations and writing.

The winners included Sabari Shriram Thiagrajan, Megha Sharma, Yogesh Baroliya, Tanya Paul, Ashmeet Singh, Ashish Behra and Bhaskar Vats of New Delhi, Yashawant Kumar Vaishnav, Deepak Dwivedi, Samved Sharma of Chhattisgarh, Ipshita Sinha, Subhajit Bagchi, Sumanta Dey, Kanayaka Bhattacharya and Upamanyu Moitra of West Bengal, Kshitij Mukesh Gupta, Aditya Vaibhav Joglekar, Janaki Padmakumar and Advait Sanjay Sonar of Maharashtra, Arya Krishnan, Madhav Sankar R Warrier, Minnu A S, Krishna Bindu Vijay, Anu Henry, Seles K Babu and V J Unnikrishnan of Kerala D Karthika Anagha, Amrutha P Nair, Sripathi Alekhya, S Hemanth, Kunatharaju Mriudula and MSR Harith Kumar of Andhra Pradesh, Dhruv Souran and Mehul Kumar of Rajasthan, Yudhajit Amit Datta and D N Ramakrishnan of Gujarat, Shubham Verma and Indira Tiwari of Madhya Pradesh, Shwetha Vishwakarma and P Srinithi of Tamil Nadu, Satyabrata Jena of Orissa, Urvi Manocha of Chandigarh, Rishikesh of Karnataka , Ayushee Tripathy of Daman, Shashank Sahu of Uttar Pradesh and Prateek Saxena of Vidyut Nagar.

A statement by the HRD Ministry said the Bhavans nurture India's creative children irrespective of socio-economic strata. The Bal Shree Scheme was put into effect in 1995.

President Patil congratulated the winners as well as the organisers and suggested including photography, computer animation and social service among talents to be honoured.

She also laid emphasis on selecting rural children.

''I think children living in rural areas and those belonging to the disadvantaged sections should be given special coverage.

Creativity is often inherent in each child but remains dormant, until given opportunity and space for growth.'' President Patil advised children to ''follow the path of truth, tolerance, compassion and work for the success of the country and for the welfare of the mankind.'' UNI MJ BDP AS2128