Five with Down syndrome felicitated for outstanding self advocacy
Karaan recently won gold for India at Special Olympics World Games
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2015-08-20 05:32 GMT
Chennai: The World Down Syndrome Congress 2015, which is being held in India for the first time, was inaugurated on Wednesday by Mr Lov Verma, secretary, Union ministry of social justice and empowerment, and Mr Gurumurthy, chartered accountant and member of the advisory board of the Vivekananda International Foundation. Five individuals (from across the globe) with Down’s syndrome were felicitated for outstanding self-advocacy, one being S. Karaan from Chennai.
Karaan recently won the gold for India in unified basketball and a bronze in basketball at the Special Olympics World Games 2015. He attended mainstream school until twelfth grade and excelled at chess at the district, state and national levels. He now competes with ‘normal’ people his same age and is presently, studying in Loyola college. He has also received many awards and acted in a feature film Inam. His mother Geetha says, I am proud of his achievements and he has shown to the world that he is no different than others”.
The other awardees include Pranay Purushottam Burde from Mumbai who received the Presidential National Award in 2014 in public recognition of his performance as the most efficient employee in the category of mental retardation. Others include Ashley DeRamus (USA) & Ioana-Rauca Avram, Mihai Arsenie and Valentin-Bogdan Cristea (Romania) reporters at TVR Television.
Meanwhile, Lov Verma, in his inaugural address said,” We are in the process of redrafting the Participation Act, 1985 and making it more effective.” He also stated that there would be an increase in reservation from 3 to 5 percent in all sectors and penalties would be incorporated for non-observance of the act. He also said, “We are going to establish national commissions and state commissions. We hope to introduce the amended bill in the coming session of Parliament.”