Indore/Pithampur: On the first day of the competition, female participants were charged up to win the Baja Saeindia 2020 thanks to the motivational speech of Shivani Pruthvi, the first woman driver to represent India in Asia Auto Gymkhana Championship 2019.
Shivani is also a part of Ahura Racing, India’s first All Women Racing Team formed in 2017. She is an MBBS student talking about Girls, Gears and Gasoline wherein she acknowledged that women are rapidly gaining recognition across the spectrum of motorsports.
In her address, she encouraged women participants at the event to display fearlessness and perseverance. This is the first time that the competition has 5 all-girls teams participating at Pithampur.
Commenting on the event, the chief guest, Paramjeet Singh explained the various schemes being run by AICTE for the development of students, faculty and institutions.
He emphasised on the scheme “Support to students for participating in competition abroad, through which financial support of Rs 10 Lakhs is provided by AICTE to the team of students for participating in International competitions abroad.”
He also explained the scheme, where students get a grant of Rs 1 lakh and faculty gets a grant of Rs 1.5 Lakhs for presenting their Research Paper in International Conferences abroad.
Buggies from teams of DY Patil College of Engineering, Pune and Nirma Institute of Technology, Ahmedabad were unveiled as a representative of mBAJA and eBAJA respectively.
Dr KC Vora, senior deputy director-ARAI; Dr N Karuppaiah, additional director; Prabhu Venkatesh, chief GM, BPCL; and Sanjay Kshirsagar, plant head – Mahindra Two Wheeler Division, Pithampur, coordinated the event.
A day before, 1700 students from 3rd year and 4th year of engineering underwent their Baja Aptitude Test (BAT), a preliminary qualifying round for the HR-Meet scheduled on January 27 and 28 at a private college in Indore.
The technical inspection started yesterday, whereby 85 teams appeared for mBAJA and 25 teams appeared for eBAJA as on today. The technical inspection will continue on Friday.
