233 Gram Panchayats to be awarded today

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The 'Gandhi Gram Puraskar' awarded to Gram Panchayats every year on Gandhi Jayanti by the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department (RDPR) has been announced for 233 Gram Panchayats this year.

Minister of RDPR and Information Technology Priyank Kharge said that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah will distribute the awards at 12.30 pm on Monday at Vidhana Soudha's Banquet Hall on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti.

He will also present a special 'Gandhi Gram Puraskar' to four Gram Panchayats, which had won the award in previous years and topped the list this year.

Winning Gram Panchayats will be awarded Rs five lakh each. The Minister said the criteria for selection of Gram Panchayats for the 'Gandhi Gram Puraskar' included quality of life, resource mobilization, safe drinking water, toilets, sanitation, roads, street lights, along with the steps taken through women self-help groups to appoint women drivers for vehicles that collect solid waste from households.

As per the award process, applications were invited from all gram panchayats of the state. Based on the online responses by the applicants, five gram panchayats with highest scores were selected in each taluk.

After the verification of the records through a districtlevel selection committee under the chairmanship of the Chief Executive Officers of the respective Zilla Panchayats, one village panchayat was selected and submitted to the government.

The proposals submitted to the government were finalized by a state-level review committee and selected for the 'Gandhi Gram Puraskar'.

The winners of the award in 2020-2021 and 2021-22 that topped the review of 2022-23 have been selected for the special Gandhi Gram Puraskar.