The first Manjunath Shanmugam Integrity award, constituted to honour people working to uphold truth and honesty in public life, was awarded to the Vice Chancellor (V-C) of Lucknow University, R P Singh, on Saturday for his efforts to check corruption and criminal activities in the university system.

The award instituted in honour of Manjunath Shanmugam, the Indian Oil Corporation officer who was killed for taking on the fuel adulteration mafia in UP, was presented to the V-C by Infosys chief mentor N R Narayana Murthy at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore.

“The award is a great tribute to Manjunath who fought valiantly in his profession when adulteration was rampant,” Prof Singh said. Speaking about his own efforts to stamp out criminals from Lucknow University, he said the “message of transparency, clean education had spread to many campuses and is likely to reach to many universities”.

Jury member for the award strategy consultant Rama Bijapurkar said Prof Singh was chosen for the award as he took on criminals who were using the university as a base. “He brought into focus the decline of higher education and the university system,” she said.

Prof Singh said the situation at Lucknow University reached a crescendo after he started implementation of the Lyngdoh committee recommendation for the student elections at the university, leading to the sine die closure of the university on December 8, 2006.