Kolkata: The MP Birla Planetarium (MPBP) had to cancel the MP Birla Memorial Award function on Friday after the award recipient, Yashwant Gupta, director of National Centre for Radio Astrophysics at TIFR Pune, was unable to reach the city after his flight got cancelled. The biennial award was being held after a gap of six years following the Covid disruption.
"We deeply regret the inconvenience caused to our guests and well-wishers... We look forward to hosting it on a revised date with the same grandeur and spirit," MP Birla Planetarium curator S Datta said.
According to officials at MPBP, all preparations for the award ceremony had been concluded by Thursday when they realised the chaos that had descended at airports across the country. The award was to be handed over to Gupta in the planetarium followed by lunch at the lawns.
Sources said Gupta was booked on a direct Pune-Kolkata flight 6E 6095 on Thursday that got cancelled. Frantic attempts to book his travel via Mumbai and Chennai proved futile.