Dipa Karmakar honoured with D.Litt. by NIT Agartala

India's star gymnast Dipa Karmakar has been conferred a D.Litt. degree from the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Agartala.

Expressing happiness on being honoured with the degree, Karmakar said she wanted to achieve such a degree once and that it would further add to her responsibility towards the people of the country.

The 24-year-old Tripura girl is the first Indian woman gymnast to have qualified for the Olympics. She finished fourth in the final round of the women's vault event at the Rio Olympics Games in Brazil last year.

The director of NIT, Agartala, Professor Ajoy Kumar Ray, handed over the degree to Karmakar, during the 10th convocation programme at the Rabindra Satabarshiki Bhavan here.

"In a recognition of her brilliant success and contribution in the field, the government of India had conferred upon her Padma Shri in 2017 and our institute NIT Agartala also felt it was very appropriate and truly inspiring to hundreds of very good athletes, sportsman and gymnast all over the state to know that this institute which stands for excellence to award Honoris Causa D.Litt. degree to Dipa Karmakar," Prof. Ray said.

Dipa is now preparing for the 18th Asian Games in Indonesia's Jakarta and 21st Commonwealth Games to be held in Australia's Gold Coast.

Besides Dipa, the NIT also conferred D.Sc. degree upon IIT Guwahati Director Goutam Biswas and Jadavpur University professor Biswajit Ghosh at its tenth convocation held on Saturday.

Degrees were given to 950 students and 31 PhD scholars. 20 students, including 11 girls, were given gold medals in various academic branches of the institute.