Mr. Sartaj Aziz, Vice Chancellor, Beaconhouse National University was awarded the M.S. Swaminathan Award for Environment Protection. This award was presented to him on August 08, 2012 by His Excellency, Dr. K Rosaiah, Governor of the state of Tamil Nadu, in a serene evening at The Park Sheraton and Towers Hotel in Chennai, India.

This award is given every year to the most deserving individual, body corporate or association serving the interest of the humanity in the broad sphere of Environment Protection. Some of the recipients of the ward in the past years include Dr. Joseph Hulse, Prof. Jeffrey D Sachs and Dr. Ismail Serageldin besides others.

Mr. M. S. Swaminathan is known as the "Father of the Green Revolution in India", for his leadership and success in introducing and further developing high-yielding varieties of wheat in India. He is the founder and Chairman of the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation.  The Time Magazine ranked him among the twenty most influential Asians of the 20th century alongside Gandhi and Tagore.

The citation read on the occasion refers to Mr. Sartaj Aziz as a tall leader in South Asia who has assiduously addressed the problems of Food Security and Sustainability in the world.

It further mentions, “Indefatigable and intrepid, Prof. Sartaj Aziz lets the world take notice of the problems that abound in our region through compelling work in focusing global attention on the poor of the world while at the same time analyzing development models that have worked in emerging economies like China and in hammering political consensus in evolving steps needed to eradicate hunger”.