Padma Bhushan for Vittal, Finally

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Nagarajan Vittal, distinguished civil servant, former Chief Vigilance
Commissioner (CVC) of India and the man who opened up the
electronics/IT industry which helped India grab the global IT
opportunity, has been conferred the Padma Bhushan award, ten years
after getting out of public life. He won the first ever Dataquest IT
Person of the Year award in 1993.



Though a lot of Dataquest awardees have won the Padma award, the
recognition for Vittal came a little late. In a story published in
2010, Padma Awards: Better Late than Never,  Dataquest pointed
this out, calling it “Conspicuous by His
Absence”. 



“But one person whose name is a glaring miss from the Padma
list in all these years is that of Nagarajan Vittal, one of the most
eminent civil servants that India has seen in the last two decades.
Vittal played stellar roles as the secretary of DoE in getting the
electronics industry out of the governments regulatory clutchesa
hallmark of those days. Then, as the secretary of telecom and chairman,
Telecom Commission, he was the brain behind the liberalization of
telecom in India, which is today a global success story.



Outside the technology industry he played a very effective role as the
Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) and was responsible for
effectively bringing transparency to the system.



It is difficult to understand why has that not been recognized yet? We
just hope that at least his efforts as the head of democratic data
standard panel as part of the Unique ID project would finally make the
government take note and his fourth innings would get him the
recognition, he highly deserves,” wrote Dataquest.



This year's Padma list does not have any names from the IT industry. size="+1">