NEW DELHI: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia, who are on a six-day visit to the country, here on Tuesday evening bestowed top royal honour “Order of the Polar Star” to seven Indians and one Bhutanese woman for their exemplary work in promoting Indo-Swedish trade and relations.
The Royal Order of the Polar Star is a reward for Swedish and foreign citizens for “civic merits, for devotion to duty, for science, literary, learned and useful works and for new and beneficial institutions”.
The royal honours were conferred on Ranajit Nobis (Swedish honorary consul based in Kolkata given Knight 1st Class), Sunil Mehra (Given Knight 1st Class for promoting Indo-Swedish ties in health sector), Teji Grover (Member 1st Class for promoting cultural exchange between two countries), Jayesh Ranjan (Knight 1st Class for promoting trade in Telangana), Lila Poonawalla (Commander 1st Class for boosting trade ties in Maharashtra), Kamal Bali (Commander award support to Swedish commerce in India) and Krishnaswamy VijayRaghavan (Commander 1st Class for cooperation in innovation, research and higher education). Among the eight award recipients was Bhutanese citizen Phub Zam.
During the first three days, the Swedish royals inaugurated the first high-Level Innovation Dialogue and deliberated on ideas to find affordable, scalable technologies to tackle challenges of sustainable growth and minimising the impact of climate change.
The King met President Ram Nath Kovind after which three cooperation agreements in the fields of polar research, science and technology and shipping were signed. The SwRead More – Source
