New Delhi (PTI): Prof Ram Puniyani and Mumbai-based Setu Charitable Trust have been selected for the National Communal Harmony Award for the year 2007 in the individual and organisation categories.

Puniyani, a former Professor at IIT, Mumbai, has been spreading the message of peace and amity through lectures, publications, workshops and meetings and by travelling extensively to different parts of the country disseminating messages of secularism, pluralism and communal harmony, an official release said on Friday.

It said the Charitable Trust, established in 1994, is engaged in the rehabilitation of riot victims and their families and more specially, children orphaned by communal, caste and terrorist violence in Mumbai and in other parts of the country.

The work of the Setu Charitable Trust in the field of community development, mobilisation and awareness building among the deprived sections of the society, such as, poor women and underprivileged children living in urban slums and rural areas, and rehabilitation of sexually exploited women in Parbhani is well-known, it said.

The National Communal Harmony Awards were instituted in 1996 by the National Foundation for Communal Harmony (NFCH), an autonomous organisation set up by the Ministry of Home Affairs for promoting communal harmony and national integration.