Mumbai: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, heroes of Operation Sindoor, and Mumbai's dabbawalas will be honoured with 28th SIES Sri Chandrasekarendra Saraswati National Eminence Award for 2025 on Saturday, December 13, at 6 00 pm in Mumbai.
The awards, which are part of the Kanchi Mahaswami festival, will be conferred on Sarma for public leadership, and the dabbawalas for community leadership. Other awardees are Padma Bhushan Dr A Sivathanu Pillai, founder managing director and chief executive officer of BrahMos Aerospace, and Padmshri Dr Prahlada Ramarao, first project director, Akash Missiles, both for Science and Technology; and Dr Mani Dravid Sastrigal for social leadership and philosophy. The award ceremony will be held at the Sri Shanmukhananda Sri Chandrasekarendra Saraswathi Auditorium.
The awards are instituted in memory of Sri Chandrasekarendra Saraswathi, the 68th Sankaracharya of Sri Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam in Tamil Nadu. Each award carries a cash prize of Rs 2.5 lakh, a brass lamp, shawl, a citation and other mementos.
Dr Pillai is the architect behind the BrahMos missiles that led the assault against Pakistan terror camps during Operation Sindoor. Dr Ramarao was the project director during the development of the Akash missile in the 1980s.
Sarma, who is ranked by national surveys as the top performing Chief Minister amongst the major states in India, gets the public leadership award for his focus on job creation, land reforms and digital governance and monthly financial aid, the organisers of the award said. The community leadership award will be presented to the dabbawalas for their unique food delivery service that delivers home-cooked lunches to more than 200,000 office employees daily, thus playing a vital role in Mumbai's growth as an industrial and financial centre.
Since inception, the awards have been given to 113 men and women of exceptional merit. Other major events during this festival includes Kanchi Sri Jayendra Saraswati National Eminence Award in Fine Arts to Thrissur brothers Srikrishna Mohan and Ram Kumar Mohan on the following day, Sri Shanmukhananda National Eminence award to music veterans K J Yesudas and T V Gopalakrishnan.
