4th National Water Awards: Odisha’s Ganjam Adjudged Best District
Bhubaneswar: Odisha’s Ganjam has been adjudged as the Best District in the 4th National Water Awards.
On the other hand, Odisha has secured the second position among all states.
Madhya Pradesh won the Best State award while Andhra Pradesh and Bihar were jointly placed at the third position.
The Vice President of India, Jagdeep Dhankhar will confer the 4th National Water Awards on 17th June, 2023 at an award distribution ceremony being organised at Plenary Hall, Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi by the Department of Water Resources, River Development, and Ganga Rejuvenation (DoWR, RD &GR), Ministry of Jal Shakti.
As part of the ongoing nationwide drive to realize the Government’s vision of a ‘Jal Samridh Bharat’ or ‘Water Prosperous India’, the National Water Awards focus on encouraging the good work and efforts made by various individuals and organizations. It seeks to create awareness among people about the importance of water and motivate them to adopt best water use practices. The event provides an opportunity to all people and organizations to forge a strong partnership and further strengthen public participation in water resource conservation and management activities.
Under the guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Ministry of Jal Shakti started a comprehensive campaign to spread awareness about water management and water conservation on a national level. With the objective of encouraging various stakeholders towards adopting a holistic approach towards water resources management in the country, it was considered necessary to set up an integrated National Water Award. Accordingly, the 1st National Water Awards were launched in 2018 by DoWR, RD & GR. The 2nd and 3rd National Water Awards were given for the years 2019 and 2020. The awards were not given in the year 2021 due to COVID pandemic.
In the year 2022, 4th National Water Awards were launched on 30th July, 2022 on Rashtriya Puraskar Portal of Ministry of Home Affairs. A total of 868 applications were received by the last date on 31st October 2022. The applications were scrutinized and evaluated. The ground truthing of the shortlisted applications was carried out by the Central Water Commission and Central Ground Water Board after which 41 winners, including joint winners covering all 11 categories have been selected for awards
