The third Smart India Hackathon, a 36-hour non-stop exercise to find solution to problems, was inaugurated at 48 nodal centres across the country simultaneously by Union Human Resources Development Minister Prakash Javadekar on Saturday morning. He addressed the over-11,000 participants through a live video broadcast.
At the Manipal Institute of Technology, one of the nodal centres, Deputy Commissioner Hephsiba Rani Korlapati was the chief guest.
Addressing the audience across the country, Prakash Javadekar said the event was a unique one.
“There are lots of problems and these hackathons are useful in finding solutions to them. In the first year, more than 30,000 students participated and came up with 19 solutions. This year, over two lakh students participated from the elimination rounds,” he said.
“In that respect, this event is unique, because this is the world’s largest software hackathon. We will have a hardware hackathon in June,” he added.
Speaking to the participants at the MIT nodal Centre here, Ms. Korlapati said, “Your contribution to this country will make life better for our people. It will be wonderful if your ideas can be taken to the common man.” She also invited the students to see the functioning of EVMs and VVPAT (voter verifiable paper audit trail) so that they can get acquainted with them.
Later talking to presspersons, Srikanth Rao, Director, MIT, said the MIT was keen on hosting the hardware hackathon in June. Giving details of the event here, he said there are 23 teams participating and there are six problem statements from four organisations.