V. V. Narlikar Best Thesis Award

At the 20th General Body Meeting of IAGRG, held on Jan. 20, 1999 at D.D.U. Gorakhpur University, it was suggested to institute a prize of Rs. 1000/- , to be given every three years, for the best PhD thesis accepted by universities in India, in GR and related areas. This was followed up by the Council which decided to arrange special sessions for PhD thesis presentations, during the future IAGRG Conferences, inviting the recipients of PhD degrees in Mathematics/Physics from universities in India, for their thesis in GR, Gravitation and Related areas, in periods of four years blocks. It was decided that the best thesis, selected by a panel of referees on the basis of quality and presentation, be given Best Thesis Award. Later the Council accepted the suggestion of Prof. P.C. Vaidya and decided to designate this award as Professor V.V. Narlikar Award for Best Thesis in GRG and Related Areas to be given in blocks of four years with the first award to be given beginning with the block 1997-2000. Finally, at the 22nd General Body Meeting, it was decided to keep Rs. 50,000/- in fixed deposit for this purpose. The first award was actually given for the Block 1997-2000.

At the 27th IAGRG GBM, it was decided to award the V. V. Narlikar Best Thesis Prize at every IAGRG meeting. Furthermore, the Prize money is also increased to Rs. 5000/-.

At the 28th IAGRG FBM, it was decided that if the Best Thesis Award is shared, then each of the awardee will receive the same Prize money of Rs. 5000/-.

The award winners are listed below.

Award for the Block	Name and Affiliation	Thesis Title	Submitted to
2018-2020	Kabir Chakravarti Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune	Gravitational waves from compact binaries as probes of neutron star equation of state and extra-spatial dimension	Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
2016-2018	Sk Jahanur Hoque The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai	Physics of Gravitational Waves in Presence of Positive Cosmological Constant	Homi Bhabha National Institute
2014-2016	Sumanta Chakraborty IUCAA, Pune	Classical and Quantum Aspects of Gravity in Relation to The Emergent Paradigm	JNU, New Delhi
2012-2014	Aditya Rotti IUCAA, Pune	Weak Lensing Probes of Cosmology	JNU, New Delhi
2012-2014	Suprit Singh IUCAA, Pune	Aspects of Quantum Field Theory in Black Holes and Cosmological Spacetimes	JNU, New Delhi
2008-2012	Sandipan Sengupta The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai	Gauge Theory of Gravity with Topological Invariants	Homi Bhabha National Institute
2004-2008	Sudipta Das Jadavpur University, Kolkata	Aspects of Quintessence Matter - The Driver of the Late Time Acceleration of the Universe	Jadavpur University
2000-2004	Parampreet Singh IUCAA, Pune	Gravity at High Energies	University of Pune
2000-2004	Ranjan Sharma	A Model for a Class of Compact Stars	North Bengal University
1997-2000	Dr. V. O. Thomas M. S. University of Baroda	A Study of Some Relativistic Fields of Gravitation	Sardar Patel University
1997-2000	Dr. Sarbeshwar Chaudhuri University of Burdwan	Exact Solutions in Gravitation Theory	University of Burdwan