598 Kendriya Vidyalaya students shortlisted for INSPIRE MANAK Awards 2025

NEW DELHI : A total of 598 students from Kendriya Vidyalaya across India have been selected for INSPIRE MANAK Awards 2024-25. As per the INSPIRE MANAK Awards scheme, each student will receive Rs 10,000 to develop science projects or models for their next phase of competitions.

The 'Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research' (INSPIRE) scheme is one of the programmes of the department of science and technology (DST) , government of India.

INSPIRE - MANAK (Million Minds Augmenting National Aspirations and Knowledge) is executed by DST along with National Innovation Foundation India (NIF), an autonomous body of DST, which aims to motivate students studying in Classes 6 to 10 between the age group of 10-15 years.

The main objective of the INSPIRE MANAK Awards scheme is to target around 1 million original ideas, based on science and societal benefits to foster creativity and innovative thinking among school children. The schools can nominate five best innovations of students through the official website, inspireawards-dst.gov.in.

INSPIRE MANAK Awards 2025

The awareness about INSPIRE MANAK Awards 2025 is spread through regional workshops, audio-visual tools and literature. An internal idea competition in school is conducted and nominations are given for two to three best original ideas, by the respective principal or headmaster online through the INSPIRE MANAK Scheme portal. The schools register themselves on the official portal. The disbursement of INSPIRE Award of Rs 10,000 is made directly into the bank accounts of shortlisted students through direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme.

INSPIRE MANAK Awards 2025: Selection of students

A district level exhibition is held and 10,000 best ideas are shortlisted for the state level exhibition and project competitions (SLEPC). Total 1,000 school students will be further shortlisted for National Level Exhibition and Project Competition (NLEPC). During NLEPC stage NIF will offer support to students to develop prototypes in coordination with reputed institutions in the country.

Additionally, the selection of ideas will be purely based on user-friendly ideas which have an advantage over similar technologies. Top 60 innovations will be selected from 1,000 projects and will be considered by NIF for product, process development, and their linkage with other schemes of NIF, DST, and their display at the Annual Festival of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (FINE).