Iconic senior citizens who were selected under five categories got acknowledged and felicitated by the Delhi government in the national capital. The five main categories are elderly in art and culture, elderly in sports, elderly in medicines, and freedom fighters of Delhi. The Department of Social Welfare announced Varishtha Samman Utsav to felicitate the senior citizens in 2020-21 to celebrate 75 years of Independence.
As part of its inaugural Varishtha Samman Utsav
The selection process happened after several applications were received from the senior citizens of Delhi and after innumerable meetings, discussions and analysis. Among these humongous applications, 24 senior citizens were selected out of 133 applications.
CM Arvind Kejriwal honoured elderly citizens in the national capital. The elderly were from all walks of life from a Covid warrior who trained plumbers and electricians during the pandemic to a blind philanthropist working for an organ donation organisation in London, a painter, and independence warriors.
While giving away these prestigious awards to the senior citizens, Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said, “I am of the belief that a household where the elderly citizens are not respected can never be successful. Similarly, a nation that does not respect its elderly citizens can never be successful. The reason that our capital city has been so successful in the last few years is that senior citizens are very happy. I visited some old-age homes and they were in excellent condition and this made me happy,” he said.
Awards were given to M Lala, who trained plumbers and electricians during Covid; Jaikishan Agarwal who works for organ donation; environmentalist Srinivas Sharma; Retired Group Captain S.C. Behri; Jeevan Ram Gupta who works with senior citizens, Gyan Chand Jain for contributions in the field of IT; painter Harish Srivastava; theatre artist Jalabala Vaidya; sitar player Pandit Ras Bihari Dutta; sculptor R S Bisht; agriculturist Raghunath Singh; founder of Sangam Kala Group VSK Sood; physician Dr Anil Kumar Chaturvedi; paediatric surgeon Dr Shanti Talwar; Unani medicine specialist Shamshul Ashfaq; Paediatrician Dr Rajendra Nath Srivastava; Vinod Kumar who works on ageing and health; Ayurvedic medicine doctors Dr Chandra Prakash Verma and Vaidya Tarachand Sharma.
The list also has Omkar Nath who provides free medicines to the poor; Olympics gold medalist Harvi-nder Singh; cricket coach AN Sharma; Virendra Raj Mehta who helps victims of land mine blasts and freedom fighter SN Kakkar.
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