'Sharpen skills to stay abreast'

The policy of liberalisation and globalisation has led to competition and to survive this era of competition, one needs to continuously sharpen the axe of knowledge and make ones line longer by extending it and not by erasing others, said Karshanbhai K Patel, chairman, Nirma Group while addressing the fifth annual convocation of Nirma Institute of Diploma Studies (NIDS) at Nirma Education and Research Foundation (NERF) campus in Ahmedabad on Monday.

A total of 304 students were conferred the diplomas in presence of chief guest Anandiben Patel, state minister of education of which 31 students were from chemical engineering, 44 from mechanical engineering, 36 from plastic engineering, 50 from computer engineering, 91 from information technology and 52 from electronics and communication engineering.

"Institutions under NERF have achieved several milestones over the past seven years setting very high standards of education and therefore, we have been able to get the status of statutory university within a very short span of time, which is an unprecedented achievement,'' said Patel.

"We all know our responsibilities are now higher not only to sustain the high standards we have set but to march further towards excellence," said Patel.

Anandiben Patel awarded gold medals for scholastic performance in all the six engineering programmes. The award winners were Jitendra Soni for chemical engineering, Harshad Shukla for mechanical engineering, Mahendra Shah for plastic engineering, Dinesh Kumar Patel for computer engineering, Srichand Hingorani for information technology and Mukund Shah for electronics and communication engineering.

"Gujarat has set an example for the rest of the country by exempting girl students from payment of tuition fees in government and government aided collages. I am sure that this will pay rich dividends to the state in years to come. I congratulate Karshanbhai for taking the lead in starting a new era of the involvement of industrial groups in establishing technical institutes in the state of Gujarat," said Anandiben Patel.

All the seven programmes at the institute are having in take capacity of 60 each and they are cooperative programmes. The unique feature of this programmes is two semester intensive industrial training, so that students coming out of the institute are ready to be absorbed by industries.