DAV Sonepat student gets Bal Shakti Puraskar for Innovation

This award was conferred to Paritosh Dahiya for two scientific innovations – Child Safe Web Browser and Kigelia Vermi Wash.

Paritosh Dahiya, a student of the DAV Multipurpose Public School in Sonepat received the prestigious Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Shakti Puraskar 2020 from the President of India Mr. Ram Nath Kovind in a ceremony on Wednesday. The President awarded 49 school students from across the country in the fields of innovation, social service, scholastic, sports, art and culture, and bravery. 

"This award was conferred to me in the category of innovation for my two projects – Child Safe Web Browser and Kigelia Vermi Wash," said Dahiya to media persons. The award carries a citation with a cash prize of INR 1,00,000; a tablet, a medal, and a certificate. The awarded students will have an interactive session with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 24, Delhi Tour on January 25 and participate in the Republic Day Parade New Delhi on January 26. The school principal Mr. V. K. Mittal said, “Paritosh Dahiya has been a very sincere and hard-working student of my school. We all feel proud of his achievements. 

Explaining his innovation, Dahiya informed that the ‘Child Safe Web Browser’ is a Mobile-App to protect the children from porn content and website. In this program, the students have been classified into five age groups – 3, 5, 14, 15 and 18 years. “Teenagers generally enter 18 plus age to access porn websites. This problem has been solved in this App. If a child wants to open a porn website or porn content, the program will ask for his fingerprint to assess the age automatically. It will block the websites and content not subscribed to the particular age group,” explained Dahiya adding he was very disturbed to see that the teenagers watch porn to much porn content, so decided to devise the software to protect children from such porn websites and content.   

Caption: Paritosh Dahiya with his project Kigelia Vermi Wash. 

Dahiya’s second project – Kigelia Vermi Wash – is aimed at rejuvenating barren land and pest repellent for the infestation of Maconellicoccus Hirsutus on Hibiscus flower. Hibiscus or Gudhal in the local language is a popular flower in the region. This was a joint project Dahiya is working with his colleague Aarushi for which they won the CBSE Zonal Level and Qualified for the Nationals’ held in Delhi in 2018. He has received a grant from Haryana Science Forum for the projects. 

Earlier, Dahiya was part of Team India in Intel International Science & Engineering Fair (IISEF) 2018 at Pittsburgh, USA, with his project Child Safe Web Browser. He also won Grand Award in IRIS 2017, at New Delhi, won Ricoh Sustainable Development Award in IRIS 2016 at Pune for his project "Kigelia Vermi Wash", represented Haryana in Indian Science Congress 2017 at Tirupati, in 2015 at Mumbai, participated in National Children Science Congress 2014 at Bengaluru, marked his presence in CBSE Science Exhibition 2018 in New Delhi. He is also an International FIDE rated chess player.