Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy presented the National Panchayat Awards-2021 conferred by the Union Ministry of Panchayat Raj to the panchayats, mandals and districts on the occasion of the National Panchayat Raj Day on Saturday.
Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the awards ceremony through a video-conference.
Union Panchayat Raj Minister Narendra Singh Thomar and Chief Ministers of various States took part.
With the press of a button by the Prime Minister, cash incentives were credited to the bank accounts of the panchayats, mandals and districts that won awards.
On the occasion, Mr. Modi said that village panchayats performed well during the COVID-19 crisis last year, and exhorted them to work with the same spirit now as the second wave of the pandemic hit the country.
National Panchayat Raj Day is celebrated on April 24, marking the coming into force of the Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act, 1992, that vests certain powers with the local bodies.
Andhra Pradesh won 15 awards in 2020 and 17 in 2021. It received 2nd best award among the States in the e-Panchayat category, two awards at the district level, and four and 10 awards at the mandal and panchayat levels respectively.
The district-level awards carry a cash incentive of ₹50,000, mandal-level awards ₹25,000 and village-level awards ₹8,000 to ₹10,000 depending on the population.
Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy presented the State-level award in the e-Panchayat category to Panchayat Raj and Rural Development Commissioner M. Girija Shankar.
The district-level awards (Deen Dayal Upadhyay Panchayat Sashaktikaran Puraskar) were presented to Zilla Parishad CEOs D. Chaitanya (Guntur) and Surya Prakash Rao (Krishna district).
The mandal-level awards were given away to the MPDOs of Sodem mandal (Chittoor), Kakinada rural, Vijayawada rural and Penugonda (Anantapur district).
The Chief Minister then presented awards for Varkuru (Kurnool), Pedalabudu (Visakhapatnam), Gullapalli (Guntur), G. Rangampeta (East Godavari) and T. Kandriga, Thallapalem, Parthavellanti and Pennabarthi (Nellore) Panchayats.
Principal Secretary (Revenue) V. Usha Rani and Commissioner of Land Records, Survey and Settlements Siddharth Jain were among those present.