ISRO chief skips college function

NAGERCOIL: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman, K Radhakrishanan, was absent at a conference conducted by an engineering university near Nagercoil, in which he was scheduled to participate as the chief guest of the validictory function on Saturday.Though the college gave no reason for Radhakrishnan not turning up for the International conference on Comprehensive Disaster Management, organized by the Noorul Islam Centre for Higher Education and Noorul Islam University (NIU) at its campus in Kumaracoil in Kanyakumari district, newspersons felt disappointed as they were waiting to get his quote on the ongoing controversy triggered by the government barring four former ISRO scientists from official assignments. Since Radhakrishnan has not reacted to the allegation yet, there were expectations that he might give his version.K Chockalingam, professor at Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice University of Missouri, St Louis, USA and Dr Syed S Haque, professor and Chairman University of Medicine and Dentistryof New Jersey, USA were the chief guests at the valedictory function. B Krishnan, director of NIU, N Nalanth, the head of Civil Engineering department at NIU, A E Muthunayagam, advisor of NIU, Christina Weber professor at University of Applied Sciences, Munich, Germany, college chairman Dr A P Majeed Khan and NIU vice president M S Faizal Khan participated in the function.A total of 100 research scholars and experts from 13 countries participated in the International conference, which also received 160 research papers.