Good news: Agriculture Department of Gujarat wins Two National Awards

The Agriculture & Farmers' Welfare Department of the Gujarat Government has received two esteemed national awards, one under the ambitious Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Yojana and the other for agricultural technological innovation. 

Under Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) Scheme, the Central Government has declared the Best Performance Award under the Grievance Redressal Category for the tribal Dahod District. Similarly, FICCI reported to the Gujarat Agriculture & Farmers Department the Crop Area Estimation and Loss Assessment Award for Application of Geospatial Technology. 

Giving specifics of the awards, State Secretary of Agriculture Manish Bharadwaj said the PM-Kisan award was declared on the eve of the successful completion of the two-year implementation scheme for three separate categories in the States and Union Territories. In total, for these honours, 15 out of 718 districts have been chosen. The PM-Kisan Scheme is to pass Rs 6,000 assistance every four months by DBT to a farmer's family in three equivalent installments of Rs 2,000. 

Consequently, for the tribal Dahod district, the Best Performance Award was declared for its performance in clearing 98.40% Grievances Redressal applications received online on the PM Kisan Portal (2087 applications of the total 2,121 applications submitted).  

This award will be given to the State Government by the Government of India's Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare on February 24. In order to ensure transparency of the benefits of Prime Minister Kisan Samman Nidhi, it should be noted here that the Central Government has declared awards in three types of assistance payments entirely based on the Aadhaar card standard, redressing grievances, and physical verifications. 

Furthermore, FICCI has declared awards in three categories: FICCI Geo-Spatial Excellence in Governance, Innovation in Geo-Spatial Technologies and FICCI Geo-Spatial Excellence in Business Applications. The Gujarat government's department of agriculture has won the award as the only government department in this category. 

It must be noted that Gujarat has been included as a case study in the report of the Government of India's Department of Agricultural Cooperation and Farmer Welfare on doubling farmers' incomes for the use of state-of-the-art technology by the state government for agricultural development.