Bhubaneswar(Kalinga Voice) : Odisha bagged two National awards at the Second Edition of the Janaagraha City Governance Awards announced on Tuesday, January 12, at a Virtual award ceremony presided over by Honourable Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs, Mr. Hardeep Singh Puri.The State won in two of the five award categories competing with 54 applicants spanning across 17 States.
Mr G MathiVathanan Principal Secy H&UD has received the Awards.Among others DMA SangramjitNaik EIC PH Basanta kumar Senapati Dy Secretary Sarada Panda and other departmental officers were present .
The Housing and Urban Development (H&UDD) won the Best State Award for JAGA Mission for enactment of laws, drafting of policies, setting up of institutional mechanisms, programmes or schemes to successfully foster urban decentralisation in the cities and state. The JAGA Mission was selected basis the historic Odisha Land Rights to Slum Dwellers Act, 2017 and for transforming urban slums into liveable habitats with intensive community mobilisation and empowering slum dwellers through Slum Development Associations (SDAs). The Mission provides slum dwellers with secure tenure and access to liveable habitat with infrastructure and services and covering 3,000 slums benefiting over 1.8 million population.
The Public Health Engineering Organisation (PHEO), H&UDD won the Best Civic Agency Award for universal access to piped water supply through demonstrable inter-agency coordination and decentralisation in practice.
The winners have been chosen by an eminent jury comprising Priyank Kharge and Arvind Bellad (Members of Legislative Assembly, Karnataka), Amitabh Kant (NITI Aayog), Ashutosh Varshney (Brown University), Niranjan Rajadhyaksha (columnist and economist, IDFC Institute),Sanjeev Chopra, IAS (Director, LBSNAA), Yamini Aiyar (Centre for Policy Research) and S. K. Das, IAS (Retd).
The Awards have been instituted in the memory of Mr. V Ramachandran, a doyen of decentralisation, to recognize ground-breaking work in decentralisation in urban context by institutions across government. Formerly known as V Ramachandran Awards for Excellence in Urban Decentralisation, the awards celebrate initiatives and efforts based on five broad categories- Best State, Best Municipality, Best Civic Agency, Best State Election Commission and Best State Financial Commission.
Expressing his pleasure on the achievement Housing & Urban Development, Law, Panchayati Raj & Drinking water Minister, Odisha Pratap Jena said “Glad to share that Odisha has been awarded as the ‘Best State’ in India for ‘Jaga Mission’ to rehabilitate slums in urban areas and PHEO, Urban development department, Government of Odisha has been awarded as the ‘Best Civic agency’ by Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs for ensuring Piped water supply to households in Urban areas. Under the able leadership and support of HCM Naveen Patnaik ji, Odisha is setting benchmarks in Urban development and Smart city mission for the world to follow! Congratulations to Housing & Urban Development Department, Govt. of Odisha team for their persistent hard work and dedication.”
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