For the first time, the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) will be conferred eight Shaurya Chakras, the country’s third highest non-combatant gallantry award, posthumously for brave action by its personnel in Afghanistan, Sikkim, Meghalaya and Kashmir.
While the awards were announced on the Republic Day honours list, the medals will be conferred by President Pratibha Patil at an investiture ceremony on Thursday.
The list of awardees includes, for the first time in the five decade history of the organisation, a Bar to the Shaurya Chakra that will be given to BRO’s dozer operator Zalim Singh for having won the same award twice over. Zalim Singh was killed in April last year while clearing a strategic road in north Sikkim for a column of tanks.
Two Shaurya Chakras have been awarded to men of the road construction project in Afghanistan — Superintendent Mahendra Pratap Singh and mason C Govindaswamy who died in a suicide bomb attack by Taliban militants . Assistant Executive Engineer Santosh Kumar Singh and driver Jaikrit Singh Rawat, who were gunned down in an ambush by militants in the Kashmir valley in June last year, are also recipients of the award.
Other awardees include driver Surinder Pal who was martyred in an attack by militants in Meghalaya, supervisor M. Sundaram, deployed on the Kailash Mansarovar route and dozer operator Budhu Khan who was hit by debris while clearing a strategic road.
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