Kohli awarded Padma Bhusan, Jhunjhunwala Padma Shri

NEW DELHI: In a fitting display of recognizing the country’s IT industry

and it’s eminent contributors, the government of India has conferred its

National awards on two distinguished personalities in the Indian IT industry.

This is the first time a IT person has been conferred a Padma Bhushan.

The highly regarded "Father of IT industry", Faquir Chand Kohli has

been awarded the Padma Bhushan and Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala, the father of

CorDect technology has been awarded Padma Shri.

F C Kohli is the deputy chairman of TCS and has been the main driving force

behind the company since inception. He is the first Indian in the field of IT to

be honored with this award. TCS is the country’s largest software exporter.

Ashok Jhunjhunwala is a professor at IIT Chennai and has pioneered a very

economical indigenous last mile wireless technology called CorDect. The

technology has been deployed in a large number of developing nations in South

America and Africa. It has also been implemented by BSNL in a number of rural

areas. He also been instrumental in attracting investments from MNC firms for

research and development work in IIT Madras in the telecom field.

Some of the earlier recipients of this award from the telecom field include,

Arun Netrawali of Bell Labs and Sam Pitroda of World Tel.