During the convocation ceremony of the 131st course at the National Defence Academy, Khadakwasla on 28 November, a new trophy for cadets of BTech course was unveiled.
As of now, only the Naval cadets are eligible for the BTech course, which was started in June 2016 and the new trophy will be granted to the cadet standing first on the merit in the BTech stream. Plans are also being made to extend the BTech course to Army and Air Force cadets from January 2017 onwards.
The new trophy will be awarded to the topper of the four-year engineering degree course after he passes out of the NDA and completes training at the respective pre-commission training academy. The first trophy will be awarded to a Naval cadet.
Since engineering is a 4-year course, cadets who are able to successfully finish a three-year academic plus military training at the NDA will get their degrees in the following year later after the completion of school training at the respective officers’ academy from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Pune.
It is required to meet the four-year requirement of an engineering course as prescribed by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).
Earlier, 274 cadets, including 95 from science stream, 128 from software engineering and 51 from sociology streams, including 4 foreign cadets, were awarded degrees.
NDA is an exceptional tri-services institute where cadets experience a three-year training before continuing to finishing schools for Army, Navy and Air Force for another year of training and eventually taking charge as officers in the Indian military.
Here is how the new NDA BTech trophy looks like:
