Shri Neeraj Sinha, Additional Director General, Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) and Prof. Anil D. Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) jointly launched MANTHAN-2021 here today. Manthan- 2021 is organized by Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) in coordination with the Innovation Cell of the Ministry of Education and AICTE.

During the launch program Sh. Neeraj Sinha said that for MANTHAN 2021, BPR&D has released 20 challenge statements which offer unique opportunity to all our youngsters to think out-of-the-box and develop innovative concepts for solving some of the daunting problems faced by our security agencies. If we like some ideas, then we will work very closely with those teams and support their implementation, he added.

Prof. Anil D. Sahasrabudhe said that from last 5 years, we have organised many national and international Hackathons by collaborating with different agencies as we are keen on offering real life challenges or problems for students to work. We want them to solve problems which are critical for our country and from that perspective we believe that this MANTHAN Hackathon is very crucial as it has direct application in strengthening our national security, he added. He hoped that a large number of youngsters will participate in this initiative and will help BPR&D to identify best of the minds and ideas from our country.’

MANTHAN 2021 will have two phases. In the first phase, participants are expected to submit their concepts against the problem statements which they wish to solve on the portal. These submitted ideas will be evaluated by group of experts in the field and only the innovative ideas will be selected for the Grand Finale or 2nd round scheduled from 28th November 2021. During the Grand Finale, selected participants are expected to build the solution to demonstrate their concepts and prove to the juries that their ideas are technically feasible and more importantly implementable. Best ideas will be declared winners.

Hackathon “MANTHAN 2021” is a unique national initiative to identify innovative concepts and technology solutions for addressing the security challenges of the 21st century faced by our intelligence agencies. During this 36 hours online hackathon, scheduled from 28th November to 1st December 2021, selected youths from education institutions across the country and registered start-ups will participatetooffer strong, safe and effective technology solutions using their technical expertise and innovative skills. Total Prize money worth Rs. 40 Lakh is announced for the winning teams. Participants are expected to develop digital solutions under 6 themes for20 different challenge statements released today using new technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, Augmented reality, Machine Learning, etc. for ever-changing security related challenges, which include photo/video analysis, Fake Content Identification along with the information of creator, predictive Cyber ​​Crime data analytics, etc.

The registration to participate in the event, will begin on MANTHAN’s official website https://manthan.mic.gov.in from August 26, 2021 onwards.

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MJPS/AK