No black robes, students at IIT-Bombay wear kurta pyjama for 57th convocation

New Delhi, Aug 11: Ditching the ceremonial black robe and headgear, the students of IIT Bombay decided Ditching the ceremonial black robe and headgear, the students of Indian Institute of Technolgy (IIT) Bombay decided wear white kurtas at the 57th convocation ceremony held on Saturday - August 10. The Union Minister of Human Resource Development, Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' was the chief guest at the event.

The institute conferred an honorary doctoral degree to Infosys co-founder and chairman Nandan Nilekani who is also an alumnus of IIT Bombay.

Later, the Minister awarded degrees to 2,603 students besides 385 PhDs, two joint PhDs of IIT-B/National University of Singapore and one Cotutelle PhD (Joint Supervision) agreement with the University du Quebec a Trois-Revieres in Canada.

Four students were presented gold medals for top performance. The 'President of India Medal' was conferred on Srivatsan Sridhar, the 'Institute Gold Medal' on Shashank V. Obla (2017-2018) and Reebhu Bhattacharyya (2018-2019), the 'Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma Gold Medal' to Dhruti Shah, besides other gold medals sponsored by donors.

While addressing the IIT-Bombay students at the convocation, the HRD Minister said that culture should be joined with education so that the individual has an enduring and firm foundation for growth.

It should be noted that recently the University Grants Commission had asked the vice chancellors of all the universities to adopt "ceremonial robes made out of handloom fabrics which would not only give a sense of pride of being Indian but also be more comfortable in hot and humid weather".