The ‘Smart India Hackathon 2017’ grand finale concluded on 02nd April, 2017at the Civil Aviation Training College (CATC),Bamruali, and Allahabad. At the CATC, one among 26 locations for ‘Smart Hackathon 2017’, 58 teams from across India participated for the 36 hour event, with students formulating solutions for improving governance and to come up with innovative solutions for India’s daunting problems.
The two day event held on April 1 &2, aimed at harnessing the creativity and expertise of students got to an aspiring start with Shri Prakash Javadekar, Hon’ble minister for Human Resource Development announcing the start of Hackathon 2017 through a video speech. The participant teams worked under the guidance of their mentor, two for each team, suggesting workable solution for the problems presented. There were 12 evaluators present from different government departments including Airports Authority of India (AAI) and All India Council for Higher Education (AICTE) evaluating the performance of teams.
The Hackathon got a further boost later in the day with Shri Narendra Modi, Hon’ble Prime Minister of India addressing and interacting with the participants via video conferencing. He highlighted the importance of technology, research & innovation and why it is essential to embrace them in this century.
On the second day of the event, after three rounds of evaluation, Navpravartak team from Jamia Milia Islamia, Delhi was declared winner of the “Smart India Hackathon-2017.” Team Coders Inc. from BVCCE, Delhi was declared first runners up. Horizon team from Delhi college came 2nd runners up, and the inspirational prize went to team Crafty from Bharti Vidyapeeth College of Engineering, Delhi. During the prize distribution ceremony, Shri Anil Srivastava, Joint Secretary, MoCA, Shri Suyash Narain, Director, MoCA, Shri I.N.Murthy, Member (OPS), AAI, Shri V.Satish, ED (IT), AAI, Shri Keshav Sharma, Principal, CATC and Prof. Rajive Kumar, Advisor, AICTE were present.
Smart India Hackathon 2017, a unique initiative intended to promote innovation and out-of-the-box thinking in young minds, especially engineering students is initiated by All India Council for Higher Education(AICTE), under the aegis of Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) and in collaboration with i4C, Persistent Systems , NASSCOM and Rambhau Mhalgi Pabodin (RMP). The Ministry of Civil Aviation was a Premier Partner in this event. A part of Prime Minister Modi’s Digital India Initiative, the Smart India Hackathon focused on the problems of social importance identified by 29 ministries and departments of the government. They identified 598 problems, which 7,531 teams of approximately 42,000 students responded to. Of them, 1,266 teams of 10,000 participants were shortlisted for the finale.
