Dr. Raghuvansh Prasad Singh felicitates NGP Awardees

The Union Rural Development Minister Dr. Raghuvansh Prasad Singh today felicitated the presidents of Nirmal Gram Puraskar (NGP) award winning gram panchayats from across the country as State Guests in the Republic Day Parade 2009.These Panchayats have become role models in achieving cent percent sanitation coverage in their areas of jurisdiction and motivated other Panchayats in building slowly but steadily open defecation free, clean and healthy villages. Addressing the media persons on this occasion the Minister reiterated his Ministry’s resolve to achieve the millennium development goal for total sanitation in the country by 2012. He said these Nirmal Gram Panchayat presidents participating from the remotest corners of the Nation, who have received the NGP award, have fulfilled the dream of Mahatma Gandhi that “Sanitation is more important than independence”.

becoming the first State to obtain this award in the country. In all 12,075 Gram Panchayats have been honored with Nirmal Gram Puraskar by thePresident of India, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil at Haryana (Hisar), Assam (Guwahati) and Maharashtra (Pune). 105 Block Panchayats and 8 District Panchayats were also honored with NGP award in a function held on

(Clean Village Award) was started in 2005 under Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) to honor, felicitate and encourage those Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) which have achieved full sanitation coverage in their area of operation and become Open Defecation Free and clean villages, for making TSC into amass movement. Over the years, NGP has registered impressive growth. The number of awardees which were a mere 40 from 6 states in 2005 increased to 4959 PRIs in 2007 which included 4945 GPs and 14 Blocks from 22 states of India.This has also contributed to the spurt in coverage of sanitation. The progress of various States in achieving NGP over the year since its inception is annexed.s With the initiative of Total Sanitation Campaign, the sanitation coverage has gone up considerably over the years to 59% in rural

lakh school toilet blocks a total of school toilets have been constructed under TSC. Dr. Singh added. To give impetus to the sanitation activities and to draw the road map to make the South Asian region free of open defecation, The Third South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN-III) was held from November 16-21, 2008 at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi on the theme of ‘Sanitation for Dignity and Health’. Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh inaugurated the conference and said that “Good sanitation should be birthright of every citizen”. The

As against the UN target to halve the proportion of people without access to basic sanitationby 2015 as defined in Johannesburg Plan of Action (JoPI),