Railman bags ‘Sreshtha Divyangjan’ award

PNS|Vijayawada

Subbaiah Thirumalai Kumar of Vijayawada Railway Division has bagged the ‘Sreshtha Divyangjan’ National Award for Individual Excellence in the Sports category for the year 2021. The Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (Divyangjan) under the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment announced these awards recently. The awards will be conferred on December 3 by the President of India in New Delhi.

Subbaiah Thirumalai Kumar is working as Booking Supervisor in Commercial Department of Vijayawada Division, is an International Para Sportsman who represented India at many International Events like Asian Para games (6 Times), Common World Wealth Games, World Games (2 Times), IPC World Para Athletic Championship in Swimming, Athletic and Archery events. He won 11 Gold, 5 Silver, 4 bronze medals in international events and 28 Gold Medals, 7 Silver and 4 Bronze in National events.

He was born in a remote village of Virudhunagar district in Tamil Nadu to Subbaiah and Badhrakali in 1976. He was a victim of polio which affected his right leg, when he was nine months old. He was interested in Swimming, Kabbadi and other sports, right from his childhood. Undeterred by the physical constraints and financial limitations, he went on to pursue his Law degree and graduated from Bangalore University in 1994.

He won his first silver medal in the year 1995 at Karnataka State Sport Meet at Mysore in freestyle swimming. He received awards from former Chief Minister’s N Chandra Babu Naidu, Late YS Rajasekhar Reddy and Late Selvi Jayalalitha.

In the year 2001, he joined SCR, Vijayawada Division as Commercial Clerk at Vijayawada under Physically handicapped, Sports quota In 2006 he switched over to athletics and participated in discus throw shot put competitions at National & International level. After a back injury, in 2018, he started practicing Archery. He represented South Central Railway at All Indian Railway Archery Championship three times and currently ranked 6th in Indian Railway in Archery.

His main aim is to win a medal at the 2024 Paralympics Games to be held at Paris, France. Shivendra Mohan, Divisional Railway Manager congratulated Subbaiah Thirumalai Kumar for winning the National Award and making the Division proud. DRM said that the real challenge in life is to convert the crisis situation into opportunity and to move forward with wisdom and confidence like Subbaiah Thirumalai Kumar.