International Biodiversity day celebrated

Amritsar, May 27, 2015: The department of Botanical & Environmental sciences in collaboration with Punjab Biodiversity Board celebrated the International Biodiversity day. The program included a declamation contest, a poetic recitation and a pamphlet making competitions on the theme Biodiversity for sustainable development. The event was sponsored by National Biodiversity Authority, Government of India.

Dr. Adarsh Pal Vig, Co-coordinator of program highlighted the need of conservation of biodiversity in sustainable development & role of student’s participation in such programmes. The students from various departments of the university participated and were given cash prizes, trophies and certificates of participation.

Ms. Manvir Kaur of Computer Science department won the first prize in pamphlet making while Ms. Aashita, Senior research fellow bagged the first prize in poetic composition. Mr. Sandeep Singh, the research scholar of the department won the first prize in Declamation contest for his extempore speech on the subject.

Dr. A.S. Soodan of the department shared his ideas on biodiversity which is his field of research. He threw light on the mention of Plants in Culture and Literature. He commented that it has been forewarned in our religious scriptures that human activities can damage the ecosystem. He remarked that biodiversity in an aspect that can unite all religions.   He argued that man’s dependence and association on biodiversity is as old as his own existence but in the pursuit of material development we have caused damage to the nature balance development. He drew the attention of audience to the religious scriptures which not only talk of the importance of plants to mankind but also need to conserve them. Now that the damage has already been done we are looking at things in retrospect but the real need of hour is to look in prospect and plan for ecological safe development.

Dr. Adarsh Pal Vig conducted the whole program and thanked the guests& participants. Dr. Satwinderjit Kaur, Head of the department and other faculty members including Prof. A.k. Thukral, Prof. Avinash Nagpal, Prof. Renu Bhardwaj, Dr. Rajinder Kaur, Er. Bhupinder Pal Singh, Dr. Kiran Dhami attended the function and helped in the judgement of various events. The names of other winners are Dipakshi (2nd ), Kulpreet Kaur (3rd), Paramjeet Singh (Consolation) in Poetic stanza contest; Sakshi, Jagdeep Kaur, Bhawana (2nd), Poonam Chaudary (3rd), Robin, Sartaj Ahmad Bhat, Manish Kumar (Consolation) in pamphlet designing; Manvir Kaur (2nd), Aadil Parvaiz (3rd) and Sheikh Abdul Shakkor (Consolation) in declamation contest. Dr. A.K Thukral and Dr. Satwinderjeet Kaur, judged the participants for declamation contest. Poetic stanza writing was judged by Dr. A. S. Soodan. Dr. Avinash Nagpal and Dr. Renu Bhardwaj judged pamphlets designed by participants. / (SK Vyas, Jalandhar)