71 year old GR Patel has been awarded by the Central State Minister Vijay Sanpla for creating an environment of education for the visually impaired girls. According to the National Association for the Blind, GR Patel made efforts to find more than 800 visually impaired girls and graced them with admissions in schools.

These are those girls who were hesitant in going to school because of their blindness and even the parents didn’t want them to study. In 1984, GR Patel was also awarded by the then President Giani Zail Singh for his exemplary work.

Patel says that he was given the task of collecting the data of visually impaired children in the Bastar region by the Collector. In this survey, he spotted 216 blind girls. Later 70 of them were admitted in schools. Patel hails from Ajmer and retired in 2008 from the post of Co-ordinator of Bilaspur school for blind girls.

A peek into Patel’s struggle

After a mishap, Patel had to take admission in 1^st standard in the school for visually impaired whereas he was a student of 4^th standard. When the time came for his admission in the 9^th standard, he was denied admission for which the school principal had to be convinced somehow. Even for college, he got admission only after the interference of the education minister.