Honouring six panchayat bodies from Punjab, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday lauded the State’s panchayats for their progressive and visionary practices. Modi, at the same time, gave a call of empowerment of women panches and sarpanches to make them active partner in the progress of rural India.
Prime Minister honoured one Zila Parishad, two block samities and six panchayats from Punjab on Panchayat Divas for National Award at New Delhi.
The State Rural Development and Pachayat Minister Sikandar Singh Maluka, along with CPS Mantar Singh Brar, sarpanches and chairmen of award-winning Panchayats, Block Samities and Zila Parishad received the award for their excellent overall performance in various activities including maintaining cleanliness, creating awareness against use of harmful drugs and other intoxicants, launching a campaign against female foeticide and other social evils as well as for implementation of the various development schemes of the Government.
Modi urged the panchayat members to work with a five-year vision with concrete development plans to bring about positive changes in their village. He also urged them to instil pride about the village.
He also gave some suggestions in this regard, such as celebrating village’s birthday, and issues such as education of children in the village, and vaccination for children, should be paid special attention to by Panchayat members.
Focusing on women empowerment, Modi called upon women panches and sarpanches to play active part in Pachaytas and become partner in the progress on Rural India. Meanwhile, Maluka said that to identify best performing panchayats for the National Awards, a survey was conducted to study performance with regard to cleanliness and other development activities.
Before making the final selection for the awards, a central team also verified and inspected the overall performance of panchayats.
The panchayat bodies honoured for the National Award included Mansa Zila Panchayats with the prize of Rs30 lakh, two Block Panchayats — Balachaur (Mansa) and Bhagta Bhai Ka (Bhatinda) — with a prize of Rs20 lakh each, six gram panchayats — Tamkot (Mansa), Harnampura (ludhiana), Talwandi Sanghera (Jalandhar), Bahadurpur (Ropar), Adampur (Bhatinda), and Harigarh (Barnala) — with the prize of Rsfive lakh each.