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Laxman
broke down while receiving the award from former Indian President
Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, and could not speak, partly due to a bad throat,
but mostly because he became extremely emotional.
The
award was preceded by a minute's silence in honour of Mahatma
Gandhi.
By
open vote, the Indian of the Year award went to E Sreedharan,
the man who masterminded Delhi Metro and has been recognised around
the world, including France where he was honoured with the Legion
of Honour, the highest civilian award of the country.
Sreedharan,
who is the Chairman of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, was also
awarded the Indian of the Year in the Public Service category
for setting a rare work ethic and transforming the face of transportation
by effective time-bound execution of the Metro Rail project.
In
his speech, he mentioned that the Delhi Metro was looking to span
400 kms in the NCR by 2021.
Members
of the public present, including sportspersons and politicians
cutting across affiliations, voted for Sreedharan.
The
Indian of the Year in Politics went to Union Minister of Finance
P Chidambaram for engineering a spectacular growth rate and being
an astute economic manager despite coalition pressures.
Chidambaram
joked that if there were any prize for a sinner, it would go to
a politician, but added on a more serious note that people come
to politics because they want to change society and the country
for the better, emphatically declaring, "I am proud to be
a politician."
Except
for Laxman, the other awardees received their trophies from Vice
President Hamid Ansari, who was the chief guest, with Kalam being
the guest of honour.
But
perhaps even more surprising than the Laxman award was the one
given to State Bank of India's OP Bhatt in the Business Category.
Bhatt's
citation said he got the award for his remarkable achievements
in the ascent of the State Bank of India.
He
was responsible for showing how a public sector behemoth could
take on the private players and emerge as a force in the fiercely
competitive banking sector.
Bhatt
went into an emotional acceptance speech and said he was surprised
as it is rare for a public sector enterprise to be recognised
at such a magnitude.
Dedicating
the award to "Team SBI," he further went on to say that
this award would make the Team SBI strive to make the bank one
of the top 10 in the world.
For
the Entertainment category, the honours went to Shimit Amin and
Jaideep Sahni for delivering the year's Best Idea Film Chak
De India and demonstrating how a simple idea can make a runaway
commercial success.
Earlier,
speaking on the sidelines, Rajdeep Sardesai told indiantelevision.com
that this clearly shows that the CNN-IBN awards were not about
star value, as Shah Rukh Khan was one of the nominees in the category,
but the prize went to backroom geniuses.
On
receiving the award, Sahni mentioned the plight of the Indian
women's hockey team and pleaded with the government to take steps
to improve the state of the game.
The
recipient in the Sports category was not at all a surprise. For
his achievements in chess, Vishwanathan Anand took the award.
The
citation read that the award was presented to him for being one
of the rare Indians to be the undisputed world champion in a sport
and making chess a popular sport in India.
Anand's
parents received the award, and his father mentioned that the
one person responsible for this was Anand's mother, who always
encouraged him.
Global
Indian of the year was Arun Sarin of Vodafone for piloting more
than US$ 11 billion FDI in India, one of the largest ever.
An
IIT-ian from IIT-Kharagpur, he is one of those small-town people
to have made an impact globally. In his speech, he mentioned that
if a small-town boy like him can make it this big, the scope for
rise in India today was endless.
Inaugurating
the ceremony, Raghav Bahl, the TV 18 group patriarch, spoke of
the fact that this was an honour for the group which has stuck
to responsible and credible journalism.
Bahl
said that giving an award to people who have been reported in
the channels, often unsparingly, "changed the terms of engagement"
and made it that much tougher on deciding between the various
nominees, all top rung individuals in their own fields.
To
underline the tough task that the jury had in hand, jury chairman
and eminent jurist Soli Sorabjee said that he now realises how
difficult it is to decide, and appreciated the judiciary in general
because of the nature of job and added that they are often criticised
despite their best efforts.
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