• President Droupadi Murmu conferred the National Panchayat Awards upon 45 awardees, selected across various categories.

• The President said about 64 per cent of the country’s population lives in villages. Therefore, the development and empowerment of villages and villagers is important to make India a developed nation.

• National Panchayat Awards were conferred upon 45 panchayats — 17 of which are led by women — in recognition of their exemplary efforts in driving inclusive and sustainable development at the grassroots level.

National Panchayat Awards

• Ministry of Panchayati Raj (MoPR) has been incentivising the best performing panchayats across the country through National Panchayat Awards under the Incentivization of Panchayats scheme, one of the central components of Centrally Sponsored Scheme of revamped Rashtriya Gram Swaraj Abhiyan. 

• These awards have been revamped and launched during the year 2022 aligning them with nine Localisation of Sustainable Development Goals (LSDGs) themes aggregating 17 SDGs.

• Primary objective through this competition is to assess the performance of panchayats in attainment of SDGs, promote competitive spirit among them and catalyse the process of LSDGs through Panchayati Raj Institutions for attaining LSDGs by 2030.

• Awards competition structure is now multi-level pyramidical at block, district, state/UT and national Level.

All the panchayats are ranked based on their performance under each of the following nine LSGD themes:

i) Poverty free and enhanced livelihoods panchayat

ii) Healthy panchayat

iii) Child-friendly panchayat

iv) Water sufficient panchayat

v) Clean and green panchayat

vi) Self-sufficient infrastructure in panchayat

vii) Socially just and socially secured panchayat

viii) Panchayat with good governance

ix) Women-friendly panchayat

• All the Gram Panchayats have to mandatorily fill the questionnaires under all nine award themes.

Categories of Awards

Awards at national level are given to Gram, Block and District Panchayats under following categories namely:

1) Deen Dayal Upadhyay Panchayat Satat Vikas Puraskar - Top three Gram Panchayats under each of nine award themes.

2) Nanaji Deshmukh Sarvottam Panchayat Satat Vikas Puraskar - For top three best Gram Panchayats, Block Panchayats and District Panchayats with highest average score under all themes combined.

3) Gram Urja Swaraj Vishesh Panchayat Puraskar - For three Gram Panchayats for their performance regarding adoption and usage of renewable sources of energy.

4) Carbon Neutral Vishesh Panchayat Puraskar - For three Gram Panchayats towards achieving Net-Zero carbon emissions.

5) Panchayat Kshamta Nirmaan Sarvottam Sansthan Puraskar - For three institutions who provide institutional support to Gram Panchayats in achieving LSDGs.

6) Nanaji Deshmukh Sarvottam Panchayat Satat Vikas Puraskar - One Gram Panchayat which qualifies and gets shortlisted for National Panchayat Awards during the subsequent years.

7) Best Participant (State/District) - State/UT with highest percentage of participation from Gram Panchayats (>90 per cent).

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