NEW DELHI: GAIL India Ltd said that the company has helped 51 underprivileged students to get through the IIT/JEE, ISRO, UPTU and AIEEE entrance examinations.
These successful students were felicitated by BC Tripathi, Chairman and Managing Director, GAIL, the company said in a statement.
“These 51 students are the heart-warming success results of GAIL’s special CSR programme, GAIL Utkarsh, being run at Kanpur,” it said.
Under this programme, 60 students from the economically backward sections were provided free boarding and lodging, it said.
GAIL has this year increased the intake for the Utkarsh programme to 100 students, Tripathi said in the statement. Most of the successful candidates come from villages and small towns, some with large families, at times striving to make ends meet.
GAIL’s Utkarsh programme is unique in many ways. It is conducted under the mentorship of Shri Abayanand, and only students belonging to families with an annual income of less than Rs 1.25 lakh are eligible for a place in the programme. Apart from this, it is possibly the only programme which has allocated 50 per cent of the available seats under its programme for SC/ST/OBC and physically handicapped students, he said.
Under this flagship programme, GAIL, in association with Center for Social Responsibility and Leadership (CSRL), pioneered the initiative of sponsoring underprivileged students for IIT/ Engineering Entrance of National and State levels institutions. Students were selected through written examination conducted at Kanpur, Lucknow, Etawah, Allahabad, Agra, and Gwalior centres. A total of 1546 students from different centres had appeared this year in the examination for selection of this coveted GAIL Utkarsh.
GAIL allocates 2% of its previous year profit after tax for implementing useful programmes for welfare of under-privileged, socially and economically deprived segment of society within its specified seven thrust areas such as environment protection, horticulture, health care and medical, community development, education and literacy enhancement, infrastructure development, community development, drinking water and sanitation.
