Genuine interest among the youth to weed out corruption was most visible from the response from undergraduates and students of higher educational institutions at the anti-corruption assignment competition organised by TISL to encourage the youth to work towards a society with integrity.
Many hundreds showed interest in participating in the competition. Of them 452 were selected having met the criteria to enter the competition which was held in all three languages. While 254 Tamil students qualified to take part, there were 157 participating in the Sinhala medium and 41 in English.
TISL held 13 seminars to explain in detail how the participants should structure their entries. These were held in Ampara, Batticaloa, Colombo, Jaffna, Kandy and Matara.
University undergraduates won the main prizes. Three from the Peradeniya University, two from Colombo and two from Jaffna and one each from Moratuwa and Ruhuna were the winners and runners-up in the three language categories.
The winner in the English medium catgory was Bhikkhu Upali Sramon (Arts Faculty – {Peradeniya) while the second and third places were won by Padmanadam Shivashankar (Agriculture – (Peradeniya) & Sithivanayagam Kokulakumaran (Engineering-Moratuwa) respectively.
In the Sinhala category, Nazeemudeen Ziyana (Law-Colombo) won the first place with Rangana de Silva (Law-Colombo) & Nimeshka de Silva (Social Science-Ruhuna) won the other two places.
Jeyabiraba Jegatheeswaran (Geography-Jaffna) won the first place in the Tamil category. Rosany Srisanthan (Geography-Jaffna) & Planiyandy Sivakumar (Political Science-Peradeniya) secured the second and third places).
Serving on the panel of judges were Professor Sarath Wijesuriya, Attorney-at-law and newspaper columnist S G Punchihewa, senior researcher Sanjana Hattotuwa, social worker Sithara Shreen and Attorney-at-law V T Thamilmaran.