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Ms Manimekalai in Queen’s Baton rally in Malta (File photo) |
IT WAS over one year ago. Ms M Manimekalai, a 1981 batch IFS officer was then Ambassador of India in Libya. Uprising against Libyan dictator Col Gaddafi was at the peak. The authoritarian regimes at Tunisia and Egypt had by then collapsed. There were air strikes in the capital city of Tripoli and elsewhere from European countries. Ms Manimekalai’s mission was to act like a full-fledged crisis management authority and evacuate more than 16,000 Indian nationals working in various companies such as Punj Lloyd, OVL, OIL etc. They were stranded in war zones of Benghazi, Tripoli etc.
One year later, on April 21, 2012, Ms Manimekalai received the prestigious Prime Minister’s Awards for Excellence in Public Administration 2010-2011 at the individual category. If Tessy Thomas is India’s missile woman post Agni-V’s success, Manimekalai is India’s evacuation specialist, playing a key role in saving the lives of 16,000 Indians.
And this was how the department of administrative reforms and public grievances wrote about her
