P. Veeramuthuvel, a Tamil Nadu-born scientist at the Indian Space Research Organisation, who was the Project Director for Chandrayaan-3 mission, has decided to donate the ₹25 lakh cash prize announced by the State government to alumni associations of four institutions where he had studied.
In a letter, Sandhya Venugopal Sharma, Additional Secretary with the Department of Space, has requested Tamil Nadu’s Higher Education Secretary A. Karthik to do the needful. The official said that Mr. Veeramuthuvel had expressed his desire to donate the money equally to the alumni associations of four institutions — Elumalai Polytechnic College in Villupuram; Sri Sairam Engineering College in Chennai; National Institute of Technology in Tiruchi; and IIT-Madras.
At a function on October 2, Chief Minister M.K. Stalin felicitated nine scientists, including Mr. Veeramuthuvel and former ISRO Chairperson K. Sivan. Besides a cash reward of ₹25 lakh, the Chief Minister announced that nine scholarships would be instituted in their names with a corpus of ₹10 crore to cover tuition and hostel fees of nine engineering students who were allotted seats under the 7.5% quota for government school students.
