Vijayalakshmi Prasana-Bidari, an IAS officer of the 2001 batch has been appointed as the new Nagpur Divisional Commissioner.
Vijayalakshmi is currently serving as the Controller, U R Rao Satellite Centre, ISRO, under the Department of Space, at Bengaluru in Karnataka. She is expected to assume charge of the office soon.
Vijayalakshmi, she was the first woman from South India to top the exam.
Hailing from a family of civil servants, Vijayalakshmi’s husband Mallikarjuna Prasanna is an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer in Mumbai. Her father Shankar Mahadev Bidari is a decorated IPS officer and was Commander of a Special Task Force set up to nab the forest brig and Veerappan. Her mother is a doctor and her brother Vijayendra Bidari is also an IPS officer.
Vijayalakshmi was the first person from Karnatak a to top the Civil Service Examination in the history of the Civil Services in India (including the ICS).
The Government of Karnataka awarded her with the prestigious Karnataka Rajyotsav Prashasti. She has also received the Mahatma Gandhi Prize for Communal Harmony by Government of Maharashtra as Managing Director of Mahila Vikas Mahamandal of Maharashtra in 2008.
She was awarded the Pride of Karnataka Award in 2015 by the NGO Round Table India.
